Coda
by Aenigmatic
Summary: The mythic invincibility of Fitzsimmons is just that: a myth. Fitz and Jemma learn the most painful way that even the foundation of a once rock-solid friendship that everyone once thought can weather any the test has its own cracks. AU after mid-S3.
1. Departure

_A/N: This fic is based on a very unpopular opinion that I have of how the writers tackled Fitzsimmons in S3, particularly during the Maveth-related episodes and the insertion of Will Daniels. I came to realise that 'Coda' was a story I wanted to read, but more than that; it was a story I wanted to write, so I did._

(Well kids, I think communication is important.)

* * *

 **Chapter 1: Departure**

Who would have known that the previously-believed unbreakable bonds of a decade-old friendship wouldn't have withstood the perfect maelstrom of time, the odd chance and more than a few debilitating circumstances?

Lost in this particularly boat-shaking revelation, Fitz starts mentally taking stock.

That much he is sure about: the confidence he has in his abilities and his understanding of science (and some newfound knowledge on astronomy) to bring Will back from that godforsaken planet.

So sure, that he leaves a hastily-written letter at Coulson's desk before joining everyone else in the lab for the final but delicate stage of the operation.

The insistence whines of the machines take precedence over his morose thoughts. Fitz parks himself at a computer terminal in a corner of the lab, with an eye on the door and an eye on the screen scrolling data that would revolutionise NASA.

After all, he'd crossed the universe for her, and quite possibly bent and twisted several theoretical laws of physics in the process _and_ is alive and well to talk about it should he wish to. But what could have ordinarily been considered one of the few miracles of his career—the leaps and bounds he's single-handedly made in pushing through to achieve the impossible—has instead shattered his entire world.

The scene in front is hard to take in.

Fitz averts his eyes and stares instead at his dusty shoes as Jemma lavishes sobbing kisses on a ragged and dazed Will, taking small comfort in knowing that his last deed for her is one that will at least, guarantee her happiness.

Locked in a tight embrace, at this very moment, Will and Jemma form a grotesque parody of a medieval triptych that he'd taken in as a wide-eyed boy so long ago in the National Gallery: a woman who weeps over a fallen man, the folds of her skirt draped carefully over him. The pose is intimately timeless, a perfect framing of devotion between two people so intense that every other subject fades into obscurity in the background.

Fitz has never felt more like the outsider. To keep on looking would be intrusively profane in this sacred moment that relegates him to the role of the dispassionate observer. To insert himself into this would render its perfect symmetry askew and disrupt the harmony of its composition.

He uses that frozen moment as additional validation that his place isn't here any longer.

Close on the heels of relief in knowing that he'd brought Will back are the tiny pinpricks of resentment, anger and throbbing pain that he'd managed to shoved into a deep, dark box the very moment that Jemma had made it clear where she stood.

Fitz raises his head and forces himself to watch as Simmons reluctantly disentangles herself from Will, her movements awkward and anxious as she moves to prep him for a period in isolation.

Coulson approaches slowly in his peripheral vision, tilting his head sideways at the flurry of activity in front of them.

"I think they won't miss us just yet. Come to my office."

Fitz slips from the room numbly. The blankness occupying a huge part of his mind is welcome; he has no more words to give. Having kept a promise he'd made himself a while ago—that is, to do all he can to make Simmons happy—he's nonetheless still floundering as the realisation dawns on him that this winding journey can end today.

His feet take him past the lab—a place which had once freed him to be in his element, then later became a refuge when Simmons was off to Hydra—and the common area (another place where the memories now weigh like a yoke on his neck) and finally to the office, his walk not unlike a prisoner making his way to the gallows.

Those memories of what he and Simmons had accomplished in the years together, both good and bad, flit past until they're like intertwined catacombs, a haven in the hell he felt he'd just endured, or maybe like a hell that he needed to carve his refuge from.

His breaths automatically quicken, the sudden onslaught of emotions leaving his bad hand trembling more than usual.

Fitz moves two steps past Coulson's doorway and tries to shake the panic free. With deliberate slowness, he tucks his hands into his pockets. He clenches his fists, then unclenches them, bunching the already-wrinkled fabric of his trousers.

The suffocating weight of claustrophobia that he's kept at bay now tunnels his vision to the very spot on Coulson's desk where the letter lies. Nestled haphazardly in the pile of paperwork on the director's desk is the envelope that he'd left on top of everything else, which means that Coulson has probably read it.

His acceptance of it, however, is another issue altogether.

In fact, it's surprising to see the letter in a sorry state, as though it'd been read, crumpled and tossed away, before it was reluctantly plucked from its grave and re-read.

Coulson's appraising sigh echoes loud in the small space, signalling the reckoning that's coming.

"I'm not going to mince words, Fitz. The last few months have been hard. On you, on all of us, but on you especially. Too much has happened and I know that you and Simmons haven't been—"

Hearing this from Coulson himself…excruciating doesn't even begin to cover this.

Interrupting what he thinks might be a speech—whether a bureaucratic or a heartfelt one—that would deter him from doing what's necessary, Fitz raises a hand in an uncharacteristic plea for silence which catches Coulson off guard.

"Please, Sir."

Fitz hates himself already for that weak response, for the plea dripping with a desperation that mirrors all the times he thinks he's lost Jemma.

In any other circumstance, he would have marvelled at how he'd managed to turn the tide—as short as it is—and take control of a conversation that he doesn't want to have with a man he's always looked up to.

Because allowing Coulson to go on would be to allow the director's blunt words to mercilessly chisel through the emotional fortress that he'd been building brick by brick every sleepless night he'd spent in his bunk since Jemma's return from Maveth.

And alone in his bed, he can be honest with himself: flaky talk of the cosmos aside, reciprocity had always been at the heart of the problem, and the shy hope he'd constantly nurtured about Jemma actually wanting him for who he is? That had finally disintegrated into nothing more than the dust of Maveth just as he thought they were both getting over his difficult recovery and her absence.

An extraordinary combination of circumstances making up the perfect storm, has moved them past the realm of potential and into impossibility.

The ugliest of the confessions he's painfully admitted to himself is one where he knows he's always needed Jemma more than she needed him. And she's always needed him as a friend, an academic equal and as an esteemed colleague.

But as a romantic partner, he'd be her consolation prize.

It's a kind of proof that he'd never wanted to face, until the sharp reality of it is shoved deep in his guts.

The conclusion he reaches doesn't come easy, but what finally pushes him forward is the timid and defeated acknowledgement that he simply needs to _de-couple_ himself from the unbreakable idea of _Fitzsimmons_.

Hard, fast and cleanly.

Having functioned so long as half of a pair, the time has come to shed this unhealthy co-dependency that has him clinging to Jemma longer than he should be. Her undercover work with Hydra, the quickness with which she'd fallen in love and into the arms of another man, the difficulty she had in facing his quasi-confession of love at the bottom of the Atlantic…aren't these events proof-positive really, that the way forward is one where he needs to stumble onwards and upwards and alone in the journey ahead?

Maybe years later, their paths might cross again and a professional relationship between them could be in the cards. And if time was really said to flatten some scars, this would all be but an unpleasant memory that's lost its sting.

Coulson eyes the letter once again, leaving Fitz to wallow in discomfort for a few seconds of absolute silence.

He shifts slightly from foot to foot, stilling only when Coulson asks him very quietly if this is truly what he wants.

 _Cut this right now,_ is the sinuous whisper in his mind. _Cut it now, cleanly and quickly, and you'll be free._

All he needs now, is the courage to ask for it.

Taking a deep breath as he battles the roil of guilt and anger in his stomach, Fitz merely nods, curtly and decisively.

He'd dug Jemma— _no, he would now only think of her as Simmons_ —out of rubble and dirt, but perhaps, it's time to dig _himself_ out of this special hell that no one else will pull him from.

Coulson's reluctant acquiescence is the executioner's blade that helps cleave _Fitzsimmons_ in half.

oOo

His bags wait at the heavy doors of the base; he'd packed the last few things of his with a single-minded determination that his mother would be proud of the moment Coulson accepted his resignation letter.

It's this last bit that has him testy and nervous, but his feet nonetheless take him to the medical bay where Simmons still bustles around a sedated Will.

Leaning against the doorway, Fitz watches her for a minute, taking in the utmost care she gives to the people around her. How often had she done that for him as well, while he'd merely repaid her by being an emotional burden that she shouldn't have to carry in more ways than one?

Simmons catches sight of him when he finally takes a tentative step in, her smile wide and a little wobbly.

"Fitz! Oh good, you're here. I wanted to—"

She trails off, as though sensing the struggle in him, the curve of her lips turning downwards into a confused frown.

 _Best to get this done fast_ , he tells himself.

Because, despite what he'd seen of her videos and what she'd imagined of them in a planet that brought out the basest of instincts and wants that aren't really there, she'd still chosen Will. In the moments where she'd thought he wasn't looking, the distant stare that he'd mistook for fatigue is one that he now knows had been for another man who was stuck a universe away.

And unless he considers Simmons utterly lost to him, he knows that every last shred of hope he harbours for the both of them would merely keep him coming back for scraps even as a small part of him resolutely insists that he is in fact, deserving of more than that.

Finally, the words spill out of their own accord, the finality of this conversation akin to a swinging sledgehammer in his chest.

"I'm here to say goodbye, Simmons."

Fitz glances once more at the sleeping man on the bed and then shifts his gaze to the familiar, beloved face that he'd grown up with for a decade.

The rush of grief and regret bursts from its dam when he sees the dawning look of wretched understanding in her eyes, to the point where it almost has him marching back into Coulson's office to tear up that letter and rescind his resignation.

But his eagerness to give Simmons what she needs wars with the only selfish decision he wants to make for himself and as much as he wants to be there for her in any capacity at all as she sorts herself out, he is of little use to her as a pillar of support when his own blind need for her would only cripple them both.

She throws her arms around him in a quick, tight hug that he misses already before the sobs start to come.

In a soft whisper, he tells her not to cry for him, then releases her, in all senses of the word.

She doesn't offer platitudes or any offers to keep in touch, for which he is grateful. Juggling the hurt she must feel with his own …it's an unbreakable cycle ( _she had_ to have known this, surely?) that could only be ruthlessly broken by one of them somehow.

Maybe it's the last time he'll ever see her, maybe not, and in the moment before he spins on his heel to walk out, he turns back partially for a last look at her. But it's a stolen and mute glance as always, like one of the many he'd sneaked in over the last few months because he always feels as though he's taking something from her without her express permission.

The approach of quiet footsteps stops him in his tracks when he nears the exit.

"Sorry to see you go, mate."

Hunter swings a brotherly arm around him then hugs him tightly, the exuberance of the action in stark contrast to the quiet words of farewell, then tucks a slip of paper into his pocket.

Baffled, Fitz fishes the paper out curiously but finds that it's nothing more than a name and a number, neither of which are familiar to him.

"Call the number when you're ready. Edwin," Hunter gestures cryptically at his near-illegible scrawl of that mysterious name, "will be expecting you."

It's all Hunter leaves him with before turning back and rounding the corner.

Fitz shoulders his bags and waits for the heavy door to open. His eyes are burning (it's just a trick of the light, he's sure of it) as he walks forward into the bright sunlight.

It takes every effort not to look back.

oOo

The journey back to Glasgow is brutal, but that's because he takes the slow way with too many connections for his liking, eschewing Coulson's offer to use the quinjet to cross the Atlantic.

With nothing but time on his hands and his meagre belongings sitting in the cargo hold of a commercial flight, Fitz only remembers traversing the distance with lingering pains in his tailbone and the occasional drink that he takes from the flight attendant.

When time is catalogued as an endless stream of memories, night can meld into day and into night again outside the plane's window, he finds that even jet-lag is no match for the movie in his mind. There's no transcendental epiphany as much as he wishes for it, but merely an emptiness and a longing that he knows he has to fight, this time, for himself.

He's come too far now—there're literally thousands of miles between him and Simmons—to look back.

That decision to leave S.H.I.E.L.D., in truth, had been made the day when he slowly realised she'd increasingly become a crutch for him but had been too deep in denial to say so. The growing distance between them had spoken volumes about their once-in-sync relationship, professional civility replacing the platonic familiarity they once had with each other.

Then the revelation of his feelings which apparently repulsed her so much that she'd gone off on assignment to Hydra (what was he to think, after all?), their tentative truce before the damn planet whisked her away, her admission of love for Will...it's a cosmic hand dealing him odds he can't overcome.

He knows that the cracks in this once invincible pairing had formed long ago. Only later can he painfully conclude that excising himself from her life is the only option for his sanity, because he doesn't think he can bear being there (it's just _perfect timing, innit?)_ when Will Daniels gets back on his feet and starts building a life with Simmons.

It's only when he raises his fist to knock on the door of a modest home in Glasgow that he realises the late hour he's arrived. But just like the stalwart woman he remembers who'd brought him up single-handedly, she opens the door in her pyjamas sans robe, shock and delighted surprise on her face when she sees him.

For the third time in two days, he's engulfed in a hug.

Clinging to her to as long as he can, he tries to give her a smile when she asks about Jemma, though he doesn't say a word in reply to her rapid-fire questions.

In fact, just the mention of _her_ now brings up the roiling emotions he's promised himself to keep tightly locked down— _Fitzsimmons_ is no longer a fixable thing, he'd made sure of it and well… _fuck_ this skewed crisis of conscience that he can't get past.

After all, how does he tell his mother that long, complicated story that starts with him nearly giving up the ghost at the bottom of the Atlantic, then giving up on a complicated friendship—if one could even call it that still—that had uttered its dying breath even before he'd walked away?

This close to breaking point, Fitz just shakes his head and avoids the intensity of her stare. He simply tells his mum that he's tired from all the travel.

That is enough to galvanise her into action. She literally pulls him inside and pushes him into the bathroom to clean up, then sets out to make a full Scottish breakfast for him in the middle of the night.

It's morning somewhere else around the world, she tells him later after the first helping of tatties and buttered toast and bacon, and her returning, prodigal son gives her an excellent excuse to eat a huge meal at the wrong time.

Much later, tucked into his childhood bed, all scrubbed raw and unpacked, he tosses and turns, and stares unseeing, at the crack in the window that he'd accidentally made the day before he left for the Academy all those years ago, contemplating the journey that has him coming back full circle after far too many losses.

The tears only fall hours later, when there's no one at home.

oOo

Apart from Simmons, Fitz learns to live with a terrifying vulnerability that he hasn't felt in years. Having been sheltered by her constant presence and then twinned with her in so many ways for so long, going solo makes him wobble like a new-born foal struggling to find its feet.

After the cathartic breakdown a week ago, he feels just a little bit stronger to face the world, so he ventures out and around Glasgow, keenly feeling the cold Scottish air nipping at his cheeks and nose and reddening the tips of his ears.

So much has changed, yet so many things have stayed the same. He walks past the high street in somewhat of a daze, still fingering the slip of paper that he hadn't bothered to remove from the pocket of his jacket. He revisits old haunts—these memories, from before the Academy, now take on faded, sepia tones—and tries to remember what that time had been like.

Never has Fitz imagined a life past S.H.I.E.L.D. and in these uncharted waters, it's either sink or swim. The former is something he'd literally already experienced and has no wish to go through again.

So that leaves him with learning how to swim, just as he tries to put the memory of the last sacrificial breath of oxygen out of his mind and the ill-timed confession that went with it.

Slipping his phone out of his pocket, he dials the number written on the piece of paper.

oOo

People can say all they like about Hunter and his ilk but Fitz is nothing but thankful for the man's outstretched hand of friendship and help in his darkest hour. The only caveat being, all bets are off when it comes to their favourite football teams.

Edwin (the man with no apparent last name), as it turns out, is an English owner of a large private security firm and apparently, Hunter has said enough to Edwin that he'd been willing to hire Fitz on the spot as a tech-and-weapons specialist, with just that single but lengthy phone call.

Edwin's proposal is simple and tempting: he wants Fitz in his first team, convinced that the addition of a tech-and weapons specialist of Fitz's calibre can only be an asset to his expanding business.

The job role after all, isn't too dissimilar to what Fitz had been doing all along, though he would be expected to participate more in fieldwork this time around and not sit in a van or in a lab behind a screen to remotely toggle switches or calibrate his readings. The lifestyle can be a nomadic one at times, but with the firm's permanent bases in London, the Middle-East and North America, he's guaranteed downtime and the choice of several countries to be based in, if he chooses to.

He accepts the offer after the hour-long conversation, then returns to his mother's house to pack his bags once again.

oOo

As spring breaks the harsh colours of winter, Fitz learns once again, what it means to be part of a team.

It's different but not unpleasant. Less grounded in alien tech, more focused on immediate threats that don't come from realms unknown.

The fieldwork training is hard, but whatever he's taken from those short years with Coulson helps him along somewhat. Whatever foundation S.H.I.E.L.D. had given him, Edwin's team now build ferociously on it.

Fitz still finds himself out of his depth—it's knowledge of a different sort after all and acting on it with a calm head under fire is bloody difficult because he's inclined to give into panic first—but instincts can be honed and sharpened and that's exactly what his new team gives him.

The leader of the team is not the Cavalry, but he comfortably holds his own in hand-to-hand combat and it's his patient training that returns some of Fitz's confidence in his own physical abilities. He isn't the strongest man around, but he discovers he's quite a natural at taking shots and that the odd but precise task of packing his go-bag for every mission (one of the first things they teach him) soon becomes a routine that he can do in his sleep.

They also give him a small lab to work in and even if it isn't the state-of-the-art kind of technology he's used to, it's space that he can call his own where no one bothers to disturb him unless it's a reminder about deployment or down-time. Engineering improvements to their safety gear becomes his creative outlet and soon enough, the teams start squabbling among themselves to see who gets to use the enhanced tech first.

The camaraderie between the guys is solid and despite their intimidating sizes, they'd been nothing but welcoming to him, more so when he manages to save their collective arses (he'd just gotten his own arse singed in the process), first on a black-ops mission in Honduras and then later, during a covert operation where they'd been inserted into deep in the Kamchatka peninsula.

But maybe what Fitz likes about them best is how they don't see the occasional shake of his bad hand and how they ignore the stutter that still emerges from time to time (they don't say anything if they notice it anyway). With the ribbing and joking aside (being the new guy can still suck at times and the pranking doesn't go away just because he's come highly recommended), he learns that there is a life apart from S.H.I.E.L.D. and it isn't a dark path as he'd previously imagined without Simmons at his side.

Edwin had merely introduced him as a former agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and that had been enough to stir some gossip amongst the more…curious ones. There are things Fitz knows that the guys are dying to ask him, but it's not something he's ready, or will ever be ready, to talk about.

His unnatural silence when they jokingly question him on girlfriends and the other missions he'd been on might show that while he'd walked past the light at the end of the tunnel, but his inability to say the words perpetually stuck in his throat is also a reminder of a dull, lingering ache that still throbs when he slides his own mental shielding up for a bit. The pattern of silence that he takes henceforth when it comes to anything remotely related to Simmons becomes as natural as breathing. Pain and other thorny emotions, rendered into muteness, had become his salvation.

But Fitz isn't too daft as to think that it's all sunshine and roses. Such moments are milestones in some ways, or at least, indicators that he has still not fully come to terms with the past few months yet, not when they still feel like a jagged knife in his gut.

Still, he meticulously builds layer upon layer of personal armour, strengthening the walls each time to keep out the thoughts of S.H.I.E.L.D. _(and Simmons)_ that creep unwittingly into his mind.

He slowly gets used to having his own locker in the boys' room with his name printed on it—the term 'operative' is so laughable when it's applied to him—as well as the tactical clothing that he dons more often now than the shirts and ties that have been stowed and largely forgotten in the bottom of a drawer.

He learns of adrenaline highs and lows during and after missions and how to manage them.

Mostly, it's found at the bottom of a beer bottle with the rest of the rowdy crew or in an intense lab session where he takes things apart and puts them back together again on his pristine workspace, and on a memorable occasion, in the bed of a young prodigy of a physics professor staying in town for a few nights for a conference.

Maybe it's a rebound, maybe it's not; he doesn't quite know how to classify this _thing_ between them that's so _not_ him. But he'd loved the past few days of laughter and easy conversations, along with the surprising amount of heat two people can generate when they're genuinely into each other minus the baggage, the expectations and the heartache.

She looks nothing like Simmons yet speaks his kind of science language, and her own beauty stands on its own. But her exuberant nature is infectious—she tells him quite honestly that the general air of brooding he carries around, along with the delectable accent, are like catnip to some women (he laughs shyly at that)—and by the time she fondly kisses him goodbye at the end of their short time together, she'd inadvertently gifted him with some measure of understanding that maybe, just maybe, his brokenness is not unfixable, and that his world really hadn't started and ended with Simmons.

Mostly, despite the gaping hole that's still in his chest, she leaves him in awe of the passion she has for the life ahead of her, though it isn't without some shock to discover how far he'd come since joining Coulson's mobile unit.

He learns to disassemble and reassemble his weapons as quickly as the rest of the guys (timed competitions that he can't resist help make this second nature to him), joins them sometimes in the gym (he develops a fondness for the punching bag in particular because it helps blank his mind) and slowly, starts accepting their invitations for after-work drinks.

He learns, for the first time, what _bromance_ really means after seeing how the guys have each other's backs, and that he's actually grateful for this sort of masculine connections that had he'd sorely lacked for the first part of his life. Their don't-ask-don't-tell attitudes compel him to shed the last of the awkwardness that he has around them, though it takes more than a few drunken nights to achieve that.

He also learns to call London, Bahrain and Colorado home, where temporary but luxurious apartments house the teams on their downtime. Eventually, he thinks he might want London as his permanent base—it's the closest to home where he's just a few hours away from his mum should she need him around.

With the weeks marked by some periods of mad activity and sometimes, even longer periods of lull, the cool spring gradually transitions into the scorching heat of summer. Without really knowing when it happened, Fitz realises that he'd completely slipped into another kind of life—and down a very different path—that he couldn't possibly have conceived of when he'd first stepped into the Academy.

The only connection with the past is the rare but treasured phone call from Hunter, who never fails to take some credit for this new life Fitz has made for himself. They steer clear of the sensitive topics because Hunter can be perceptive when he chooses to be and he always grits his teeth and swallows back the questions he wants to ask about the rest of the team and well, Simmons.

Or Simmons and Will Daniels.

The only time Hunter tangentially mentions her is when he slips in a side-complaint about her new engineering partner who has had more than a few difficulties filling the shoes he'd left behind.

But Hunter also never fails to make it clear that he is sorely missed.

Just like that, the dull ache returns with a vengeance.


	2. Spiral

**Chapter 2: Spiral**

 _A/N: Where Jemma thinks and blames herself into depressing knots, where Hunter keeps throwing paper at people and actually helps in his own way. I'd actually intended everything to be a long-er one-shot where Fitzsimmons fall out and find each other again, and the fic has grown a mite bit longer than I'd expected. To those who'd read and left comments, thank you so much._

* * *

It's exactly twenty hours and forty-six minutes after the base door shuts behind Fitz that the enormity of what really happened slams down hard on Jemma.

Before that, she had shuffled around in a daze after saying goodbye to him, caught up between overseeing the first stages of Will's recovery and entertaining the delusion that Fitz would simply just walk back in and proclaim his leaving an ill-timed prank.

After that short period of time marked precisely on her watch, the thought of him being gone for good sinks in with a lung-crushing finality that has her shaky and sweaty and curled up in a corner of a dusty supplies room as a thick, thick fog of mounting panic, confusion and despair grows.

Fitz is gone.

Gone.

It's a dream, a bad dream, it has to be. Fitz wouldn't just go away, would he? He wouldn't just say goodbye and leave her in back in the base to—

He can't be gone.

No, no, no, no—Jemma bounces upright in a manic frenzy and runs to the lab, expecting to see his workspace as it is, files and all, if only to convince herself that the past day didn't really happened the way she thought it did.

At this late hour, the lab is understandably empty, but Fitz's workspace, or what used to be Fitz's workspace, is merely an empty bench and desk with a silent desktop.

Pulling out his chair, she sinks hard onto it, the inevitably truth harshly stripping the layer of delusion that she'd hoped to wear for a little longer, leaving an amalgam of agitated denial, confusion and guilt that she can't make head or tail of.

The only word that her spinning head can come up with, why?

But as quickly as the question comes up, so does the answer. It should be so blindingly obvious really.

Should she really be surprised that her thoughtless actions have finally driven him away after he'd sacrificed everything for her time and again? Whether he'd planned to leave all along, or whether he'd done this on impulse, pushed past his own endurance limits by her own indecision and her torn emotional state that has had her vacillating between Will and him…hadn't it all simply pointed to her being so damn blind and stupid to see past her own pain to his, until all he could do was walk away to save himself? Had she made him feel so unworthy?

With panicked breaths, Jemma forces herself to reassemble the pieces of the jigsaw-puzzle that had been Fitzsimmons. In her reconstructed version of their narrative, she pinpoints all the cracks that they'd blithely plastered over until the big, expansive thing that used to be their unshakeable friendship finally crumbled under those stress fractures.

Many of them, she'd been responsible for.

Hours pass in that same sort of misery that leave her frozen in that uncomfortable spot, but the discomfort pales in comparison to the tightness in her chest and the tears that can't stop leaking from her eyes.

It's only when she's paged on the comms with a reminder that she does in fact, have a patient waiting for her, that she slowly makes her way to the med bay.

Jemma staggers to Will's bedside and stares unseeing at the machines that keep his body regulated. In his sedated state, he slumbers on in blissful oblivion, unaware of the seismic shift that had shattered everything she's believed of herself.

oOo

The obsession with finding what had been the straw that broke the camel's back becomes Jemma's only pastime. And it's a strange head space to inhabit, leaving her feeling utterly out of her depth as a scientist who prizes the quantitative above the subjective.

Whittled down to the very basics, for each action, there's a cause, and for each cause, there is a consequence. As neat as this statement sounds, attributing definitions and descriptions to each column is nonetheless an exercise in frustration, because the overlap begins as soon as she overthinks the whole mess that is a friendship that has spanned the majority of her life and is therefore rooted too deeply in her psyche to consider as a discrete unit apart from whom she sees herself.

Her preoccupation with cause and consequence morphs eventually into unanswerable questions that pop up inadvertently in the middle of an experiment or during a mission which she can't quite wave away.

It begins the same way—with the whys, followed by the hows, the whens and the what-ifs.

(Why didn't he feel as though he couldn't talk to her anymore? Had it been when he realised she'd all but given up on him while he hadn't, or when he'd finally thought she didn't need him anymore? Or was it when—)

The scenarios build on themselves, spinning her out in directions that she tortures herself into looking at where there might be dead ends, until all that's she's left with is the dismal conclusion that for all her self-flagellation, whatever she'd done or not done hadn't been enough to make Fitz stay.

Is she so fickle that she'd wanted Fitz because there was no one else, then went on to Will because she gave up on Fitz, then insisted she loved Will while relegating her best friend to an afterthought as they worked to bring him back from Maveth?

Are her affections that flimsy—had she thought she was going to hang onto both of them and decide where the dice fell?—and so indecisive that she'd only just made everything worse?

And just what did that really say about her?

The same questions rear their ugly head when Will tries to engage her in a conversation, when he tells her with sad resignation that it's time for him to leave the base to spring a visit on his family.

Brimming with self-recrimination, she doesn't know what to say in return to him except she's sorry over and over again, his confusion turning into understanding when she chokes on whatever she intends to say after 'sorry'.

For Will, she's merely a broken record.

For Fitz, who needs to hear all of her words and her pleas, isn't here for them.

It gets to the point where she starts to get more than a few strange looks from Bobbi and Daisy. Clearly, it doesn't escape May's watchful eye, or Hunter's uneasy side-eyed gaze.

Will's farewell a week later comprises entirely a small, impersonal peck on her cheek and a longing, uncertain glance backward at her before he disappears into the personal transport Coulson had ordered for him.

Jemma barely notices anything past the vague notion that he's leaving, barely remembers his departure an hour later when she's back in the cold, empty lab. That deeply steeped is she in the funk that's descended on her since Fitz had upped and left that nothing else but him can take up so much heart and head space.

In the manic days and weeks that follow, she trashes everything she has on her mobile on Maveth—photos and vids and all—as they now serve as a reminder of what she once had and lost. She only wishes she can scrub these memories off her mind as cleanly as she can scrub her unwanted technological data. Change time, even, if possible.

The nervous twitches in her fingers, the wrinkled hems of her shirt because of her constantly clenching fists, the occasional shake and tremble, the unexpected moments when the sobs start coming…these odd symptoms that develop…well, an objective, medical self-assessment tells her that she's stressed and anxious. Small penance to pay it seems, to finally understand what it must have been like for Fitz when she'd walked out on him to Hydra on the conviction that he would only get better without her.

There's even a hurriedly-typed draft of a resignation letter that sits at the bottom of her drawer in the lab, because where's her motivation now to go on?

Even in his absence, the ghost of Fitz flits about, in what Thorsten Kranz— S.H.I.E.L.D.'s quick answer to the engineering position that Fitz had vacated—accomplishes in the lab. Kranz isn't not the genius Fitz is but he is competent enough, she supposes, with a wealth of experience in extra-terrestrial technology thanks to his collaborations with Jane Foster and Erik Selvig. But their partnership sorely lacks the electric connection she'd long taken for granted, and reinforces once more, the one-in-a-million gift she'd tossed out along with Fitz's affections.

As caught up as she is in missing Fitz, it's not hard to notice that his absence rides hard on the team. Everyone functions a little harder, more tetchily, without the lubricant of his loyalty and kindness; they're all a little dimmer without his brightness apart from his engineering brilliance.

oOo

Time functions differently in this fractured world.

It's measured backwards in the minutes and years as she thinks back of all the times she and Fitz spent together, and then counted forward as the minutes that they've been apart from each other, to the point where the squares and numbers on her calendar start to look like gibberish.

Oh, the irony. The irony.

For the moving on that Fitz has done, it's she who can't, in the wake of his departure.

She'd always considered it beneficial if Fitzsimmons were instead two separate people who could learn to stand on their own. The bald truth that she faces now, is that she has unwittingly gotten exactly what she wanted, and without having ever fully considered the consequences of that desire, finds herself entirely unprepared at all for her entire world to upend itself when this happens in the most hideous way imaginable.

How did she ever once believe that they were stronger without each other?

She still needs him as much now as he'd once needed her, but that need in the past months had been pointed and skewed towards fulfilling a particular purpose, and shaped as gratitude and relief for his unquestioning stance in helping her to bring Will back, and for his gentle understanding in leaving their holding pattern floating in no-man's land for a more urgent cause.

Having done that with the blithe assumption and trust that he'd always be there for her because neither of them can after all, imagine a future where there isn't a (platonic) Fitzsimmons at the very least, had been yet another significant misstep in a litany of mistakes she'd made.

The only unexpected result is her own wretchedness when Fitz had given her all the space she needed, then finally made that permanent.

(The questions still tumble out, unabated. The conclusions are obvious, sometimes less forthcoming.)

Fitz is and should be, a non-negotiable entity in her life. She's simply so sorry that it had taken so much to happen for her to face this and the very thought of it never fails to cause her eyes to burn red hot.

Despite her time in Hydra and on the planet with him being her only touchstone, she knows now that survival is possible without him. In what kind of capacity is yet another one of those endless questions, though it's only become clearer that her relationship with Will—despite it being one forged out of desperation and resignation—is now a regret she can't seem to shrug off in the clear light of day, another colossal mistake leading to the deeply-dug grave of Fitzsimmons.

An objective analysis of her time on Maveth results in an academic understanding that a combination of extreme circumstances had made her do the best she could, and that the mechanisms of survival aren't always comprehended by those who watch from the sidelines.

Nonetheless, she's still disturbed by the latent implication of the lack of faith she had in Fitz than he did in her once the sustaining visual images of him had vanished—and that she'd fallen thereafter (and possibly too easily) into the arms of another man, never having considered once the consequences of the potential fallout because it was an option she'd deliberately chosen not to entertain at all after having given up on returning home entirely.

That it'd been a slap in the face for Fitz when all he had only been understanding and patient with her feels like something else she needed to add to a list of growing sins.

Little wonder he'd walked. Lost in her own confusion and muddled emotions, she'd inevitably flayed him raw, open and bleeding, dimly saw how it affected him yet did nothing about it. She might as well have just fashioned the weapon of torture herself.

(The questions plague her dreams too.)

Fragmented bits of memory and imagination burrow into her dreams as she sleeps, then sit heavy on her shoulder like the devil with a prodding pitchfork. Mostly, her subconscious is a tortuous web of younger Fitz and older Fitz, injured Fitz and healthy Fitz, interspersed with the blue hues of the horrid planet, the stern face of Will and the tangible death of hope that feels like paper being torn up repeatedly.

Often, dream-Fitz stands out in sharp relief and looks at her with tear-filled eyes and a wordless plea to keep away. She blinks and the oily darkness swallows him up, heedless of her cries for him to stay. In another version of them, he's yelling and she's yelling back and there's no give to their strife until he vanishes into thin air.

Vanishing before she can reach him or make things right—that fearful coda where she can't see or find him ever again—is the common denominator in all of them.

It's not long before her ache for him slips into these liminal cracks, sheened with a deeper longing that stretches its phantom fingers over her bare skin and brings the imaginary weight of a heavier body over her own. Yet anything more is beyond her reach, leaving a tight, excruciating wetness that even the work of an insistent hand can't relieve.

The sheets are wrinkled and damp with sweat by the time she stumbles out of bed, but she wouldn't have it any other way. The price she pays for the distress and the utter sense of loss that don't fade with the dreams is a small one. What other way than to have Fitz—even one that's a figment of her imagination—by her side?

oOo

The world fuzzes, tilts and goes black one unsuspecting Thursday in the lab.

Jemma wakes up in her own med bay, unused to the blissful silence where the accusing voices finally stop in her head, which probably means—

It becomes quite clear that something has gone quite wrong.

She looks down in confusion to see an IV line snaking upwards from her hand, trying to recall when she'd found herself comatose in a cot after waking up feeling perfectly fine this morning.

"I'm going to wait until you recover, then kill you myself." A voice that sounds suspiciously like Daisy's pierces the woollen fog that she seems to be enveloped in.

She sits up gingerly, the motion prompting an anxious Bobbi to hover at her bedside and push her back down. "Where…what is—I mean…did something happen?"

Daisy gives a snort that has no humour in it. "To say the least. One moment you were happily tinkering with your science-y stuff and the next, you were out cold. Thankfully you didn't hit your head too hard when you fell."

That explains the strange, concussive nausea that swirls in her gut. "How long has it been? Three, four hours?"

Bobbi pads into the med bay and gives her the hard truth. "More like three days, Simmons."

"That's impossible! I—I was in the lab at—"

"Malnourishment, weight-loss, dehydration, social withdrawal, insomnia. Classic signs of PTSD. Think we weren't noticing? We should have something about this sooner," Bobbi interjects tersely, and ticks off her fingers as she catalogues Jemma's medical issues, before diverting her laser-sharp focus to injecting something into the IV line. Her voice gentles as her eyes rove searchingly over Jemma's face. "Maybe you should start talking to someone about this."

I talk to Fitz, every day, every hour. In dreams, she's tempted to argue.

But all she does is to refuse the drugs. "No, no more sedatives."

There's no bargaining with Bobbi and Daisy.

"That's not happening.

"You need rest."

Exhaustion, whether medically induced or not, eventually triumphs over willpower. Their grim faces are the last thing she sees before her eyelids droop.

The next evening, the usual faces she expects to see aren't there. Instead, in the background are the faint strains of an argument abruptly dying down in a flurry of footsteps that sound like they belong to someone in a bit of a rush.

Jemma ignores them and re-looks the setup Bobbi has done up for her. Discharging herself is an audacious move, but the beeps of the equipment will likely alert everyone to what she's doing and Jemma isn't in the mood to put herself in a precarious position when the news of an agent disregarding her health reaches Coulson and May.

She's in the middle of rethinking her own options when the last person she expects to see saunters in.

Hunter announces himself with an eye-roll and a sigh, then tosses a small, folded up piece of paper on her blanket. "I've thought long and hard about this, but the hell-beast insisted this was the right thing to do. The biggest surprise in the history of surprises is that I actually agreed with her."

That explains the put-out expression. Still, cryptic statements of that sort make her edgy.

"What are you—?" She eyes the folded wad of paper warily, then busies her fingers with the edge of the blanket.

His mouth hardens into an unforgiving line as he mutters something about Bobbi persuading him with means he shouldn't be caving easily to before speaking up. "Something I really shouldn't be doing."

One can never know with Hunter, whether the paper contains baby powder or a deadly mutagen or something else he manages to slip by the ranks (he has his ways). But she's thankful she isn't Bobbi, so chances are, its contents would be neither.

The knowing stare that he's levelling at her now however, makes her want to squirm. "He was talking about you. I didn't realise it then. Quite possibly gave him piss-poor advice too."

What does he—

"Do you mean—"

"Might have mentioned saying something to a girl he liked, how she didn't feel the same and left. Told him it was her loss."

Pain flares bright and hot in her chest at Hunter's words. Had Fitz actually thought that?

Her loss, indeed—a loss she hadn't understood until now.

Hunter nods vaguely at the thing he'd tossed on the blanket. "All I'm going to say is, he's a mate and a good one at that. Best be sure you know what you're doing before you go at it." He waves a finger between them for good measure and looks at her pointedly. "I hope we're on the same page here, Simmons."

With shaking fingers, she unfurls small piece of white paper that he'd dropped on her lap earlier.

He'd written down an address in south London and a mobile number.

oOo

Functioning on the assumption that Fitz hadn't wanted her near, as deserving of this distance that he'd put between them as he deemed, Jemma had resigned herself to thinking about him from afar.

The seasons still turn, heedless of the fog she's walked herself into.

(Fitz visits her in dreams anyway, and dream-Fitz becomes one she takes possessive comfort in.)

But having restrained herself from looking him up, or obsessively following his movements like a deranged stalker, looking at the address printed in black and white in front of her restarts reality, and not the kind that she'd been floating through in the past few months.

There'd been much she still can't figure out, still raw from the hurt and pain of having her best friend gone. And honestly, it's absolutely terrifying to examine the way in which she'd loved, or if she could (or had ever been) be in love with Fitz.

For all the soul-searching she'd done, it's still easier shying away from this shady portion mostly because the fear of what she'll really find when she does.

Past the natural chemistry that they have as best friends, there's something else there…but what? Numbers and scientific facts and bodily reactions hardly seem adequate as markers of attraction, especially when it comes to the emotional descriptors that Fitz seems to have an intuitive understanding of and that she sorely lacks.

It's oddly enough, Hunter's intervention that smashes through that cumbersome obstacle and helps her turn that metaphorical corner. The cobwebs that she'd been caught in suddenly clear, the tangibility of the piece of paper giving rise to the tangibility of him…and perhaps, the tangible possibilities of them.

The most important answer is there all along, buried beneath the years of friendship that she'd naively assumed hadn't evolved and changed with time. Their version of romance had always been the hidden layer tucked under the comfortable cushion of friendship, quietly lurking in the spaces between that she hadn't quite known existed until his departure had forced her to examine them.

Their tentative bonds forged in the Academy, strengthened by love as time had gone by—the kind that is all-encompassing, had slipped by unnoticed because there hadn't been that many noticeable differences in the way she'd felt about him back then and how she does now.

If there's anything that Hunter had helped shift, it's the allure and attraction Jemma finally actively allows herself to affix to what she hasn't been able to name.

After being torn between giving Fitz the space he needs and satisfying the voracious hunger to know where he is and what he's doing, Jemma finally gives in to the pull of the latter.

oOo

The heat of a Greenwich summer night hits them all in the face a week later when she follows the rest of the team out of the Zephyr and onto ground zero. The remnants of Malekith's invading forces during the Convergence had long settled, the sleepy(ish) place having regained its rhythm a year after the clean-up despite being cannon fodder in yet another cosmic battle on earth that seems to be happening with alarming regularity.

But the occasional report of unusual readings emanating from ground zero gleaned from other mobile units prompts Coulson and the team to make a trip there.

A potential 0-8-4 perhaps, or the emergence of yet another mutagen to which S.H.I.E.L.D. hasn't been privy.

Jemma hauls her testing kit and scanner out and walks out after Daisy and May, absently tapping at the tablet for the results as she takes in the Royal Naval College framed against the London night lights. Being southeast of London leaves her light-headed, filled with the tingly sensation she gets each time the team sets foot in the British Isles. She's back in her country of birth, nearer to where Fitz lives, so close, yet so far.

The place is cordoned off, with more activity than she expects, the discretion that they're normally used to conducting their investigations blown wide open. But the world has had its eyes open to realms beyond and the secrecy in which they operate still sometimes gets holes poked into it.

Their S.H.I.E.L.D. unit is just another one of the other teams canvassing the area, their different uniforms and tactical gear indicating their allegiance to different agencies or law enforcement branches.

Jemma falls behind, her scanner chirping with the alerts of several anomalies apparently buried in the ground.

Her pulse thunders loud in her ears.

Something's...off.

Further ahead, May, Hunter and Bobbi slide out their weapons.

A peculiar, indistinct noise barely registering on the human auditory scale raises the hair on her arms and blurs the edges of her vision. Her limbs are heavy, rooting her to the spot as the whitish façade of the college starts to take on a silvered hue in the dim moonlight as indistinct muttering cuts through the humid air and grows in urgency.

Male, Jemma thinks dimly. Young. Speaking a language that the voice-recognition function in her tablet doesn't even recognise.

Ahead of her, May gestures curtly.

Bobbi and Hunter make an abrupt right. Kranz and Daisy cut left, streaking across the expansive grounds.

At the same time, two other distant figures run in from the northern side of the campus, gesticulating wildly. Their yells get louder as they approach a group of men dressed in black tactical wear huddled in the same corner, who break formation and head towards the Grand Square.

Jemma's confusion grows. Nothing about this makes any sense. Coupled with sudden blank screen on her tablet, the funny, hair-raising humming that's all around and the steady crescendo of the human yells make her head hurt.

Unsteadily, she fumbles for her ICER, her feet automatically take her in the direction of that group of men; there's just something familiar about th—

The shock of a sonic pulse makes her knees buckle as another high-pitched human voice pierces the hive of activity, scattering the less intrepid of the law enforcement agents.

She trips and scrambles back onto her feet, disoriented by the cacophony around her—or is it just in her own head?

A wind whips up and displaces the muggy summer air, an invisible tornado streaking through the grounds, hurtling loose debris through the open space and lashing her hair around her face. It stills abruptly as it comes, though the intensity of the hum picks up again, as do the dull ringing in her ears and the thumping of her heartbeat.

Jemma sprints towards the smallest alcove, towards the small specks that must be Daisy or May—

Without warning, an explosion blasts through the pillars, the aftershock throwing her off her feet and into another body that crashes onto the ground under the force of her weight.

In the rattling silence that settles in the wake of the detonation, Jemma remains unmoving for a few seconds, fighting the nausea just as she realises she's on top of a crumpled heap of a man who's too still for her liking. The dust makes her sneeze, already coating everything in a layer of grey, the feedback dulling her mind from earlier finally fading with each passing second.

Rolling off the poor man beneath her, she starts to turn him over just as he stirs awake—

The white noise disintegrates completely as she stares into clear blue eyes mirroring the same shock she feels.


	3. Friction

**Chapter 3 - Friction**

"Fitz?"

Is that…?

Her voice. Her voice.

 _What the hell...?_

He has to be dreaming.

Fitz blinks once, twice and still sees the same thing. The same face.

Her face, those worried eyes. Hears her voice, calling his name.

There's no fucking way that he's blacked out beneath Jemma Simmons, when all he remembered was running to the nearest shelter before something detonated and something else heavy had hit him hard enough to pass out.

Waking up beneath Simmons in the worst way possible isn't what Fitz had counted on. In fact, he hadn't counted on ever seeing her again, let alone meeting her in this manner, months after he'd said his goodbyes.

And if Simmons is here, the rest of the team isn't far behind.

The vague possibility of their paths crossing again existed, of course, something that he'd feared and hoped in equal measure. The overlap between the black-ops paramilitary stuff and the other kinds of missions that deal with potential extra-terrestrial activity Edwin takes on always make him edgy.

In the past few weeks, it has just been low-key risk management and technologically-driven security solutions, but being in Greenwich right now drives home this overlap of what the team's doing with what they might run across in this mission.

Or rather, whom.

That worry as it seems now, is fully merited.

The rest of the boys have told him with matching grimaces that it doesn't happen often, but when it does, it often involves some kind of fatality that no one can really solve—at least, no one whose knowledge goes beyond advanced weaponry and engineering. Their part has always been to provide more of the brawn than the brain and it's Fitz, as they tell him, who tips the scales a little more in the latter direction and gives the team a wee bit more class.

For it to have happened in Greenwich—the place of yet another battle between humans and races determined to subjugate humans—is a kind of unpleasant reminder of being led back by the tip of his nose to the very things he'd been trying hard to move on from.

Bruised, dusty and too flustered for his liking, Fitz takes his time sitting up, too aware of the heat of her hands on his shoulders even through the thick fabric of his gear.

"Simmons? What are—"

Before he can have another word in edgewise, she starts babbling, something so familiar that a completely different kind of ache stops him short.

"—might be hurt when the blast happened and your head…there might be a concussion that I need to check—"

"Simmons! Stop! I'm alright."

She finally does and moves awkwardly to the side as he sorts himself out, getting first to his knees, then to his feet.

However, the shock of seeing Jemma Simmons in the flesh fades enough for him to notice the rubble around them and their very precarious position just under a jutting pillar that's in danger of toppling right over their heads.

"We have to move. Now," he grates out and grabs her hand, starting to navigate clumsily over the debris when a chorus of voices reaches them.

They take a mere ten steps before Smithy emerges out of the cloud of dust with a torch and a weapon dangling loosely in his hand.

"Fitzy, you alright there?"

Shite.

It's Smith who has come calling. Or rather, Smithy, the large Viking that Fitz dubs him in secret, with a penchant for telling the wrong jokes at the wrong times, which is why Fitz loves him too much and hates that he's soon about to be the victim of a stray, throwaway line that will only make things more awkward.

"Yeah. The rest of the guys?"

A beefy finger points in a direction. "Outside. Waiting for you. Everyone's good, considering the circumstances." In the dim light, Smithy's eyes widen in curiosity when it finally registers on him that Fitz isn't alone. "And who do we have here?"

"Let's get out of here first before story time starts, shall we?"

Fitz grimaces at the sharp, knowing glance that he gets in response. But he'd take his new team's funny brand of shelter and protection over the dread of talking to Simmons again, despite the lad jokes the guys are certain to spring on him when the site's secured and the place canvassed.

Simmons is oddly quiet as they make their way to where his team is and as Fitz had fully expected, garners wide-eyed stares when she stumbles out of the rubble after him. With her hand still tightly latched onto his and barely any physical space between them, he can only imagine what sort of picture he's presenting to a team that is currently gaping at the both of them.

The surrealism of the moment strikes him hard, along with the urge to laugh hysterically at this twist of fate or whatever the cosmos has done this time by putting him straight where both his old life and his new one converge.

Avoiding her eyes, he gently disengages himself from Simmons and faces his leader. "What's going on, Langston?"

Langston's disgruntled shrug says it all. "Nothing that we should know about, apparently. Direct orders to stand down and move out."

Classified information, then. Above their pay grade. Only those with the appropriate clearance levels have access, the knowledge meant only for a particular group of people within S.H.I.E.L.D. so the rest should buzz off. Fitz isn't part of S.H.I.E.L.D. any longer, though he can probably guess what it'll be about as he takes in the aftermath around them.

From where he stands, he finally sees May, Daisy, Hunter and Bobbi trying to contain the fallout, and with May's usual efficiency, things get done quicker than most people can blink.

In some alternate universe, he'd be waiting in a lab awaiting the new toy or gadget that they'll bring back.

Now however, he's content to stay back, to watch with detached eyes.

But there's still Simmons by his side, silently taking in everything and suddenly, he's unsure what to do with her.

He opens his mouth to say something, but a vast chasm suddenly opens up between his mind and his tongue. All he knows is that what has been worth saying has long been said, which leaves the mundane and the banal.

So what's really left but yet another cursory (and lame) adieu and a clean getaway?

(He'll pray later to whatever higher being out there—even if the odds have never quite been in his favour—in the transport that's arranged for the team, that this severing is permanent this time around.)

He faces her and aims for an evenness that he barely feels. "Simmons, I have to go."

oOo

Jemma is entirely unprepared for this. Whatever this is, but it's almost akin to a second-chance that she knows she needs to grab by the bull's horns. But how rare is it that Fitz is—

"Wait!"

Her body functions apart from her mind for once, as she clutches his arm again and pulls him back.

The detonation, the weird hums, the blast…and Fitz. It's taking a while for her to catch up—mentally and emotionally—but all she knows is that Fitz is turning to leave and that he simply isn't going to flit out of her life the way he did all those months ago.

Between the force of her pull and her yell, Fitz jerks to a stop and so does his entire team.

Someone nudges Fitz's side. "You know her?"

The man Fitz called Smithy earlier shoots her a meaningful look. "Looks like this isn't over yet."

His eyes flit to her then back to the group of men moving to stand rather protectively around him. "She, um…was someone I used to work with."

Disbelief wars with anger. "Honestly, Fitz, someone you used to work with? Is that all we are? All we were?"

To his credit, he looks a little uncertain at her outburst.

But the euphoric excitement of seeing him again crashes with that muttered denial, melding with rising hurt and outrage that she can't contain. There's not a Simmons in any multi-verse that would willingly go on in life without a Fitz, she's that sure of it now (how wrong she'd been all along), but hearing him so easily disavowing the weight of their personal history to a curious audience nearly puts paid to that theory.

"From the looks she's giving him, I doubt that." The tallest, blond one strokes an imaginary goatee and looks like he's starting to enjoy himself to her chagrin.

"Now this is something the bloke's never mentioned."

"Quite a bit of drama here. Ah, is that why that thing you had with Amélie—"

"So, still waters and all, eh, Fitz?"

The men look as interested in their bickering as gossiping old ladies at a Sunday morning brunch, which makes her cringe. Thankfully, Fitz seems to feel the same—she doesn't miss the glare that he shoots his team and the rife speculation that their untimely reunion seems to spark.

Beyond the surface irritation however, this Fitz is somehow…scarily indecipherable. Shuttered, with so much distance and a touch of coolness that she isn't used to seeing on his face, more so when he's talking to her.

Not so much of an open book any more, then. For all of his warmth and kindness that she's used to seeing, to be the recipient of the other end of the emotional spectrum from Fitz, of all people, sparks a twinge of panic.

But just because she's crossed some distance in her own head, or even jumped some major emotional obstacles, there're still the physical ones to overcome with him. With the added complication of the last half a year of separation, this version of Fitz might as well be a stranger she'd be trying hard to reconnect with.

Unless, what they had before…it's all irrevocably lost.

Had it taken all but 6 months to erase them completely?

"This is Agent Simmons." Fitz looks at the men around him and introduces her curtly to them. "She's with S.H.I.E.L.D.."

He gets a slap on his back and several nods of acknowledgement by the team with that revelation. Jemma doesn't know much he has or hasn't told them or just how settled he's been in this new life but it's apparently enough to bring out those looks of sympathy…for him.

She sighs, the painful edges of their stilted interaction rubbing salt into the wound of their broken friendship. "We can't be doing this, Fitz."

"—what the lady said, Fitzy lad," Smithy chimes in with a smirk. The mischievous twinkle on his face suddenly reminds her of Trip, along with the nagging feeling that Fitz has found another team of his own to fit into.

Someone else—the team leader, perhaps—cuts right back in. "As fun as it is seeing Fitz in a domestic dispute, there is actually still work to be done. And those reports aren't going to write themselves, ladies, if you've conveniently forgotten." He pauses long enough for the loud groans to fade. "Wheels up in fifteen."

The relief that shows up on Fitz's face is stark. "Yeah, copy."

The rest of his team reluctantly head out, leaving the both of them alone. Only a few feet separate them now, yet this awkwardness is as new as the man standing in front of her.

Jemma tries again, needing a solid footing with him but finds none. Her hand darts out to grab at his arm, yet again. "Fitz…it's…it's good to see you. I was hoping you could…stay and talk a bit?"

He's silent for a moment as he stares at her. "I think we've said all we needed to say, haven't we, Simmons?"

She doesn't quite know how to answer that. There are in fact, a thousand things she wants to say, having imagined every conversation between her and Fitz nightly in her bunk, but seeing him in the flesh, so changed, so altered in a way she can't recognise, leaves those words clogged in her throat.

"I—"

"You heard Langston," he rushes on, looking in the direction where his team went. "It's not the best time, I have to go, and I think May and Daisy will be looking for you. I'm sure S.H.I.E.L.D.—"

"Please, Fitz." Her protesting plea comes out unbidden, causing him to pause.

The hardness in his face softens for a second, as he shakes his head with a small sigh. "I'm glad to see you well, Simmons. Take care of yourself."

That goodbye tastes like a subtle and involuntary form of rejection. It's not in him to be cruel at all but she feels the sharp sting of it just the same. The formality of his address is jarring—never in their years together had he spoken to her like that—, snagging the air in her lungs and widening the fissures in her heart.

Through eyes that suddenly burn hot, she watches despondently as he stalks out of the alcove and into the night.

oOo

The post-mission briefing goes by in a fog.

There isn't much she can say about the 084 at the end of a hard week at the lab. That it comes with the power to influence human behaviour as well as the ability to tear open a dimensional rift that existed for all of 4.56 seconds when the blast happened are cause enough to get S.H.I.E.L.D. lab techs moving a little faster and more enthusiastically. Test results remain inconclusive, especially with the kind of dark matter they've been dealing with, which isn't of the Earth variety, just to complicate matters.

But weak boundaries between realms, mysterious portals, inter-dimensional slippages are all quite beyond any of their expertise right now. Maybe they'll just leave it to the self-styled Avengers to deal with those—Jemma couldn't actually care less.

Kranz takes over from her with a technology update and she's more than happy to sit back to let her mind wander to the previous week's meeting with Fitz.

It's new fodder that she obsesses over, and how wrong it'd gone in so many ways and how she might pull a mulligan. As she'd done the entire week with every spare moment she had, taking apart every facet of their brief interaction and putting every word and action under a mental microscope, the immutable conclusion that emerges each time is that Fitz had truly given up on them.

Her thumbs brush absently across the pages of the report she'd just given Coulson as her jumbled thoughts finally coalesce in an idea so reckless that it continually twists her insides in dreaded anticipation.

Only when the rest of the room clear out later does Jemma ask to speak to Coulson privately.

oOo

With a tight, tearful hug from Daisy, cheerful little twin smirks from Hunter and Bobbi and solemn nods from May and Mack, she walks off the Zephyr with her bags and into the dreary and muggy London evening.

There will be a ton of favours she knows she'll owe Hunter by the time she's settled. But he's gone through hoops and hoops to get her here—something she suspects that he's doing more for Fitz than her after his wry confession that he's been in and out of Fitz's corner since he'd left—by giving her more than probably deserves at the moment.

Pressing the button and the code that she's been given at the entrance of the nondescript warehouse where Edwin has his team headquartered, Jemma waits until the opaque doors slide open to reveal an empty sitting area and an electronic barrier that requires a biometric scan before she can even step foot into its inner sanctum.

The barrier slides open silently before she can do anything else, the corridor ahead lighting up as she shoulders the bags with a deep breath and walks ahead.

She's rustled the hornet's nest. No turning back now for the stings that await.

It's Edwin Sorcher himself who meets her halfway, the man whose name she can finally put a face to. There's an assessing glint in his eye before he holds out his hand and she gets the uneasy feeling that he already knows way more than he lets on.

"Jemma Simmons, in the flesh. Welcome to Citadel."

oOo

Housed in the residential zone of Edwin's cluster of warehouses, her smallish bunk isn't unlike the ones she'd lived in previously, except that it isn't underground or on a plane. The squeaks and squawks of urban wildlife interrupts her first early morning, and along with the sunrise to regulate her body's biorhythms, waking up in London's backyard of sorts takes some getting used to.

It is far from a difficult change in routine really, the adjustment passably pleasant as far as transatlantic upheavals go.

But everything else lies outside Jemma's comfort zone; she's eking out a series of paths she'd never envisioned past S.H.I.E.L.D.'s grey walls since the Academy.

The induction here in contrast, is as quick as the one at S.H.I.E.L.D. had been bureaucratic and multi-tiered. Without mincing words, Edwin points out everything that she needs to know, gets her settled in Fitz's small lab with a makeshift space of her own and then ushers her out of the building to look at the residential spaces of the place.

The discussion she had with Edwin the night before had instilled a new sense of hope, prompting her to wonder if this was what Fitz craved when he'd left: the exhilarating chance of a fresh start, the opportunity to forget and forge something entirely new on his own.

The bland terms of their agreement had been hashed out, rehashed and then renegotiated, until both were satisfied with what they'd put on the table. At the end of it, with her contract drafted, Edwin told her unhappily that she'd driven a very hard bargain, then ordered her straight to her bunk to get some rest after their signatures were put to paper.

Not for the first time, Jemma wonders just how presumptuous this move of hers to South London really is, depending as she is, on the assumption that the decade-long friendship with Fitz is more invincible than they'd both thought, and that Fitz would be willing to have anything to do with her after what she'd done to him. That he'd still have her around in any kind of capacity, even if he's seeing someone else, as heart-splintering as that might be.

It isn't a coincidence that her arrival is timed such that Fitz's team is away on assignment for a week in Africa, thanks to Hunter, whose private conversations with Edwin (and Fitz) have probably paved the way.

oOo

In the lab, two days after her stepping off the Zephyr, Jemma takes a moment to centre herself. This small space, even without Fitz, is Fitz in every way, the tells (the slight quirk in the arrangement of his half-finished prototypes, the physical files, the tools) in this pristine, organised room only obvious to her because she knows—knew—him in and out. This ingrained habit of his hasn't changed at least, as meagre a source of comfort as she has in putting together what she knows of him in his absence.

She's on his turf now, attempting to piece back together their shattered relationship, or rather, to tell him how much she'd missed him beyond friendship, that she'd stop at nothing to show him how important he is to her—

The rush of footsteps into the lab cuts even that thought away as she turns to face, for the second time, shocked blue eyes.

It finally registers on her that he's back early, still fully dressed in the same black tactical gear she'd first seen him in, with an atypical-looking rifle of sorts slung over his right shoulder and a backpack hanging on his left.

Five full days early, which meant the assignment hadn't gone according to plan, leaving her as flustered and as unprepared as him for this unexpected meeting.

Just the thought of this sends her into a freefall. Like a week and a half ago, when that shock detonation had sent her careening into him, adrenaline and anticipation now flow through her veins, fusing into a mass of tumbling emotions she can't separate from one another.

"Fitz," she begins with trepidation, "I—"

Taking a tentative step into the lab, Fitz blinks twice and rubs a hand over his face as confusion slowly melds into irritation. "This has to be a fucking joke."

She steels herself for the outburst, needing some courage for the specific and uncomfortable questions that are just around the corner.

"No, it isn't, Fitz. You wouldn't talk to me the last time we met, so I…I took matters in my own hands."

"You…you took matters—what have you done, Simmons?" He stalks to his bench, dumps the rifle on it and unceremoniously drops his pack on the floor before turning to face her with his arms crossed over his chest. "Why are you here?"

It's only now, in the harsh fluorescent lighting that she gets a good look at him. With a pang, she realises there's so much she finds unfamiliar and yet familiar.

But it doesn't matter that he's slightly bulkier and more leanly-muscled and assumes some sort of distance between them like a protective coat of arms.

The hard introspection she'd put herself through had merely helped her articulate clearly what she hadn't bothered to put into words before: that she has loved every iteration of him and probably always will, from the handsome, pasty boy in mismatched colours and odd cardigans, to the man who struggles with trembling hands and faltering speech…to the one right now who's harder to read, who's more confident in his own abilities, whose distrust now shines a little too brightly in his gaze.

The old hurt, however, lingers in his eyes. That vibrant blue which she loves, becomes a faded and dimmed version of what she remembers as he looks at her, now hooded and fortified by the mile-high walls he had constructed for himself in the intervening months.

There's so much timidity in her voice when she ventures a question of her own. "How…how have you been, Fitz?"

He pinches the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. "Don't—I…I…just, don't make this any harder, Simmons. Just answer the question."

"I'm trying not to, I swear." She's fumbling around, hating this stilted, awkward moment that has barely just begun. It's infinitely harder to be brave, she finds, to do the right thing, to say the right words, and later, to stick around, than to run away and call it the convenient solution to problems. "I just wanted to be your friend again, Fitz, if you'd let me."

He stiffens noticeably on her emphasis of that word.

Not the best of beginnings, then.

"You've come a long way for that," he says flatly, his hands already busy with dismantling his vest and weapons, stopping only when he finally notices the new setup of his small lab and the space sharing that he'd be required to do in the future. "What's this really all about?"

"Can't you tell?" She asks softly, desperate to erase the wariness that laces his response. And to set that initial course of action, she knows that he rightfully needs an explanation—no, her full disclosure—of her sudden insertion in a space that's probably sacred to him. But her frantic thoughts, rushing at a mile an hour, prove to be tiny snares that refuse to settle into logical coherence.

"Can't I tell…? No, I can't, Simmons!" He gestures wildly around him, his escalating distress manifesting as a trembling hand and a raised voice. "All I know is that we've just returned from Africa, I'm bloody tired and…and…there's…there's this! You!"

Mutely, she watches him pace with a fist pressed to his mouth, anxiously trying to find the words other than sorry.

"Fitz, please, please listen to me."

He stops abruptly in a corner of the room, fighting for control as much as she is.

"I—I know I've made an unforgivable mess, Fitz. I know that. You have every right to be angry. I took advantage of our friendship, your affection and your attention…I just…I just wish I saw it sooner before and—"

"And so here you are, trying to apologise?"

"It's more than that, Fitz. I know we didn't part on the best of terms—"

He interrupts her with some annoyance. "At the risk of rehashing a history that I'd rather leave alone till the end of the universe comes, I don't recall ever trying to make you feel bad about it. I offered to do those things and you know damn well too that I did. To give you the oxygen. To bring Will back."

"I know! And I wish you weren't so noble—"

"Because that wouldn't give me the chance to play the hero?" He cuts in bitingly.

Frustration pools deep at his insistent interruptions, at his deliberate dodging of the conversation that she's been trying to steer them into having. "That's not what I'm saying!"

"Is that why you're here?" Fitz stubbornly repeats the question, the pinched look on his face growing with each punctuated syllable. "If this is some effort on your part to—" He paces in a tight circle, gesturing at her then at himself, seemingly at a loss for words. "There's no need to make amends, Simmons. I did what I, no—we did what we had to do, and that's it, okay? We both made choices and now we live with them."

"That's just it, Fitz! I can't live with them!" Some deep-buried instinct born of emotional turmoil tells Jemma that this is their last chance. Mess this up and there'll be nothing more left of them to salvage.

He tilts his head upwards and sighs. "Some things are best left alone."

"This isn't!"

Conversely, his agitation spurs her on. It's the only thing that she's hanging onto right now—any show of emotion, any kind of reaction from him—because it's the only indication she has that he hasn't turned completely indifferent to their friendship, or whatever he's willing to restore to them both.

"What about S.H.I.E.L.D.?" Fitz demands suddenly.

He's raking his hand through his hair, rubbing his hand over his mouth—all the signs of increasing agitation that she wants to take away, but only exacerbates.

"Indefinite leave of absence," she tells him simply, feeling the burden of the past few months shed immediately, as though giving voice to those words could make that fact more concrete than it really is. "And a temporary place here with Citadel."

The shock that rolls off him is like a tangible wave of disbelief and incredulity. "You what? Coulson allowed that?"

"I told Coulson that I needed to go. And with some help from Hunter, I did. They both understand."

"It's been six months, Jemma!" He finally yells, the agony so clear now on his face that it hauls her back to the very day he'd left. "I've only had six sodding months away from you…that's like a magical number isn't it? Six sodding months to get over you and I really thought I was on my way there. And then you waltz in here after all this time like nothing's out of place, wanting our friendship back like nothing ever broke it in the first place—"

"No, that's not it at all!" She puts in urgently as tears start to burn at the corner of her eyes, as the pressure on her chest grows with the revelation he'd just tossed at her. If the months of separation have brought such a different outcome for her, and as eager as she is to talk out her personal revelations, it's harder to accept that Fitz isn't even willing to meet her halfway.

"I…I couldn't come to terms with what your leaving really meant, Fitz. For six months, I wondered and struggled with how I'd done everything wrong such that you had to leave. Then envisioning a future without you…I couldn't do it."

"Really? When you came back from Hydra, when you chose Will…that was you moving onto a future without us." Fitz stalks up to her, forcing her back against the lab bench as he leans in, heedless of her personal space. "I did nothing, Simmons, that you didn't already first do to us. I left because there was nothing else there for me. Maybe it's the coward's way out, but it was the only option I could stomach back then."

His mirthless chuckle and flinty stare dissect her as he delivers blow after blow of hard truth that feels like a blade in her ribs.

"Is that what you wanted to hear? I helped bring Will back to you, because it was him you wanted. Will, the man you said you loved! You've made that abundantly clear. So tell me, why are you here, in South London, when you should be at S.H.I.E.L.D. with Will Daniels at your side?"

The anger that pours from him shouldn't be unexpected. But everything shifts yet again in a fundamental way, condensing, shrinking around her despite the conclusions she'd come to in the months they were apart. Hearing everything from Fitz's perspective merely confirms how her words about Will, tossed out in a fit of despair and confusion, had merely raked over festering wounds and left them with such prominent scars.

Time might have passed, but the current of grief and hurt remains. Jemma knows that full well. But to adequately convey that it's him that she'd really ever wanted or needed or that she's beyond sorry for playing too big a part in making him feel that he could never measure up, is a momentous task she's clueless to undertake.

"Will isn't even in the picture."

He retreats hurriedly as though she'd burned him and hikes a thumb backwards over his shoulder in challenge. "Everything you've said and done previously contradicts that statement."

She stops short for a few seconds.

Fitz had always held his own in an argument, their competitive natures always providing the creative fodder that had driven them forward together. But this man…this man, unmoved by her half-baked confessions and still full of questioning doubt, makes her feel as though Fitzsimmons is truly over.

This man in front of her, programmed by betrayal and holding her up to relentless scrutiny, is terrifying.

Never had she wished more than now that she could take back that thoughtless statement said so long ago; evidently, it'd torn Fitz up more than he'd let on and just…why hadn't she looked past her own confusion to see how devastating this would have been on him?

"Don't you want to know what happened after you left?"

His scoff is loud in the enclosed space, his knuckles already white from the death grip he has on the lab bench which he's leaning against.

"It's none of my business, Simmons, what you do now."

"You're hearing it, anyway," she snaps in return, tired of hitting her head against the Fitz-sized-wall repeatedly for all the lack of progress they'd made. "Will…left. Those first few days after you—I can't remember them too well, only that I couldn't stop obsessing over why you went away and how big a part I'd played in it. I think he tried to talk to me, but all I could think about was you and the gaping hole you'd made when you left. So he…all he could do was to walk away a week later and I can't even blame him once for it."

Fitz is already shaking his head as she barrels on ahead in a rambling glut in order to quell the doubts and hurts that he'd been sequestered with, panicked that she's on the verge of losing him again when she's so close in laying the first, small brick in their wrecked foundation of mutual respect and trust.

"I missed you, Fitz. I don't know what to say to convince you, but you're really all that I want. In whatever way you want me back. You're the only one I could love in the way you need me to. It's you, Fitz. I just need you by my side, Fitz, in whatever way you want us to be. I'm…sorry I took so long, I'm sorry I couldn't figure it out earlier and made you suffer. I need you to believe me. If you couldn't trust anything I said before, please believe me this time."

The light-headedness that sweeps in after her clumsy, inelegant confession leaves her shaking and wrung-out.

He flinches instead, his scepticism almost a tangible entity as he hangs his head. "Did you come to this conclusion only after I left?"

Involuntarily, the question makes her think back to the days and weeks that had greyed out everything else and brought to the fore the mind-crippling fear that she'd truly lost him.

"If I can forget those months apart from you, it wouldn't be soon enough. If I thought Maveth was my greatest nightmare," she pauses as he briefly turns shimmering eyes to her, "the last half a year surpassed that a million times. I don't know how else to convince you, Fitz, because I know this probably sounds flaky and glib and…and hollow and empty. But could we, please, have this chance again?"

Fatigue and defeat wash out the anger in the slump of his shoulders.

"It doesn't work that way. We can't just turn back the clock, Simmons and you know it. There's no such thing as starting over, no reintroductions or the pretence that we're both 16 years old and achingly shy and completely out of our depths in a whole new world in an Academy too unprepared for us."

Not when the following years have left them out at pasture too long for the scars to be erased. It's what Fitz doesn't say but what she hears all the same. He's merely echoing what hadn't already occurred to her.

Still, her voice cracks as his implication sinks in. "You…you don't want to try? Not at all? Not even as colleagues?"

He fiddles anxiously with a spare part on the bench before putting it down, as though mulling his next words. When he finally looks up at her, the conflict and guilt written on his face break her all over again.

"This—this is not what I wanted at all, Simmons. Not someone who…who suddenly realises I'm worth something more only after I left, but hasn't been sure of it when I was around for years." He waves that bit away, as though it's an insignificant detail that he shouldn't have bothered with. "The point is, I wanted you happy and I've long accepted that it wouldn't be with me. So you don't have do this only because Will is gone."

Her denial is sure, this time. "You don't understand! I'm not—"

"—and honestly? I…I don't know what you're really saying right now," he squeezes his eyes shut in consternation, "I'm not ready to…I can't process this, alright?"

Caught at this impasse, misery lodges itself as a lump in her throat. Floundering in an area where there's no specific scientific method to follow, no easy answers waiting at the end of the line, she's steering a ship into a treacherous storm without any navigation markers.

It takes her a few tries to find her voice, as impulse prompts her to move towards him and grab both his hands tightly in hers.

"You were once my best friend. But you're also much more than that." He snaps his eyes back to hers as the familiarity of the words washes over the both of them. "Please, Fitz, please let me show you."


	4. Coda

_A/N: What was originally meant to be a drabble grew into this unrecognisable monster all because I needed to write out my own headcanon before I went quite insane over a fictional couple. Here's the second (and last) part of it, which was more fun and more difficult to write just as the angst gets left behind bit by bit._

 _There have been parallels that I've tried to draw, dialogues given new spins and all in the name of (fan) fiction, some outrageous liberties taken with behind-the-scenes-moments and medical science. The ending is deliberately left open-ended so it's up to your imagination how it goes on from there—the story's focus is the Fitzsimmons relationship, which, as I found as I wrote on, to be independent of context. They'll always be there for each other (that much is immutable), though it's nice to indulge in a happy ending, as always._

 _Thank you for your comments and support._

* * *

 **Chapter 4 - Coda**

The shadows and the days lengthen as the relentless summer slowly mellows into the first week of autumn, creeping up to London like a thief in the night.

The sudden gust of wind that rattles the window shocks Fitz enough to put down the soldering iron and throw his safety glasses aside. In retrospect, picking another miniature drone prototype as a personal project to work on might not have been the brightest idea, the constant alterations and modifications of the base design too gratingly reminiscent of Fitzsimmons's early crowning glory—more so as he considers his newly-acquired lab partner.

With the parts of the new prototype scattered around him, he ponders the fragility of trust, the immutability and breakability of relationships. The hard discipline of engineering is metaphor-rich for the more intangible things in life as he'd found out long ago, found especially in the way things are taken apart and put back together again, for the efforts that are made in strengthening a component while weakening another so the device runs at optimal levels.

Predictably, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Most of the time, it gets him infuriated enough that he'll hurl those bits against the wall and start the process all over again in a worse mood than when he began. That right there, the similarities to real life rear their ugly head.

Fitz sneaks a glance at Simmons, who's currently bent over a pipette and meticulously recording the results of the experiment. For the relatively content and peaceful life that he thought he'd built since leaving S.H.I.E.L.D., this curveball she'd thrown him since her arrival two months ago has left even that in disarray.

Had her presence alone undone all the progress he'd made on his own without her?

Even the answer for that has his mind chasing circles around itself, and in the process, he wears himself vexingly threadbare. Never had he imagined that this new stage of his life would be interrupted by the very person he is trying to move away from—it simply hadn't been a factor that he'd considered as he marked time away from Jemma Simmons.

Yet outrage and resentment had gradually faded into bewilderment as Simmons determinedly set up space in his lab after announcing her intention of staying—he supposes it is now their lab once again—and gets down to work on upgrading Citadel's biometric scanners in between patching up the injuries of the teams that now cycle regularly through the lab to ask for her tender ministrations.

She obliges quite nicely of course, with a practiced, professional smile for everyone who comes through. For the past thirty days, the lab has quite literally, doubled up as a second med bay with the increased flow of people who come through.

Apart from the random visits (and the salacious winks thrown his way each time the team members come in to hound Simmons about minor scrapes and bruises) annoying the hell out of him—the small lab isn't his private, quiet space anymore so that makes him grumpy—, Fitz can't really figure out what she's up to.

He doesn't quite permit himself to think too much about the fervent declarations she made during the huge argument any more than he has to. Their fight on the day of her arrival had after all, been loud enough to draw the attention of the nosy buggers, who'd been sneaky enough to eavesdrop, then drop bits and pieces of that in casual conversation just to see him cringe as they try to reconstruct the story based on their own outlandish assumptions about what he and Simmons used to be.

(They're wrong in every way, which Fitz doesn't bother to correct.)

Because hope, as Fitz knows, is just that: a bloody witch that could just turn on him as it did with Simmons on more than a single occasion, so it's infinitely more beneficial if he keeps his mind stayed on work, gadgetry and missions.

Yet against all odds, here she is, so intent on weaving back together the severed threads of their prior relationship, reconnecting them with the slightest of touches on his hands, his arms, his shoulder, with words that are friendly but professional. Resurrecting all she can of Fitzsimmons, it seems, using the safe anchor of colleagues-first, then friends, though he knows that it still takes two to clap to mend this rift, leaving only the stiff reluctance on his side downing her stalwart efforts.

The times when they eat meals together are unpredictable as a result of this back-and-forth dance between two people who don't know how to live with each other anymore. There are mostly periods of awkward silence that neither he nor Simmons can quite bridge, punctuated only with short discussions on their own projects when the silence becomes too stifling to ignore.

It would be so easy to fall back into their old routines and conversations where they finish each other's sentences. Too easy, in fact, that Fitz consciously holds himself back from doing just that, reducing his time in the lab with more sessions with the punching bag and locking himself in his bunk early in the evenings with his tablet to do his work in peace.

He'll show up the next day as though nothing's out of the ordinary.

To her credit, Simmons doesn't say a word about it.

But today, the coiled tension Fitz has been feeling all morning finds itself suppressed in his clenched fists. Grabbing his mug from the foldable side table he'd built into a far cabinet (he'll make his own rules in his lab), he strides into the pantry intent on another cup of tea and possibly, a dozen of those peanut bars that he'll remember to stash in the bottom drawer of the—

A fresh steaming mug of chai inches into his peripheral vision, coming to rest next to him on the table top. Glancing up, Fitz is surprised to see the very person his thoughts had been consumed with of late nodding at the newly-made drink in front of him.

"You look tired, Fitz. Thought a shot of caffeine might help perk you up." With that, Simmons seats herself at the table, a cheerful quirk forming on her lips as she pats the empty seat next to her in invitation. "Sit with me for a while?"

The darkening sky is startling proof that he'd worked throughout the day without any sense of time passing, yet cloistered here, in this quiet, intimate space with its dimmed lights…alone with Simmons…this makes him waver. Everything here defies his natural conditioning to stay away, first, painfully self-constructed in the days where he wouldn't allow himself to think of her as anything more than his best friend, then later, reinforced by seeing her devotion to Will Daniels and the time spent trying to forget about her.

The memory of it is cause enough to decline the invitation.

His indecision shows for longer than what would constitute a polite response, until he finally throws caution to the wind and averts his eyes before he does as she asks.

Her brightening smile feels frustratingly like a reward for a good deed he hasn't done.

oOo

Uncertainty still grounds their relationship, mixing with the nervous anticipation Jemma feels every time they have a lab session together.

Fitz stays less in the lab than she does, called from time to time to short assignments both in and out of the country or to training with the rest of the guys. He isn't exactly avoiding her now, but he doesn't seek her out actively as he used to do, choosing instead to mutter his own hypotheses and findings into the thin air. She still remembers the bitter sting when he'd taken every opportunity to leave the space as much as he could in the early days, but what had she been expecting, really? A song-and -dance routine with his arms open wide in welcome?

If leaving for Hydra so long ago when he'd needed her was devastatingly difficult, developing the mettle to stay for him when he doesn't seem to need her now, is infinitely harder to do.

It isn't the first time that such contrasting scenarios of their stilted one-step-forward-two-steps-back dance swirl in and out her head, but they come especially during one of those quieter moments when she's in the lab and Fitz is out with his team.

To her relieved surprise however, tea time gradually becomes a more regular break that is inserted into long days when their schedules coincide. Silence reigns more than the unfiltered, easy conversations they used to have, but well, she'll take all she can, though it prompts her frequently to question and second-guess her own actions.

They aren't Fitzsimmons by any stretch but the imbalance isn't something she's complaining about however; knowing every part of his mission brief, occupying the same spaces as he is with the uneasy truce between them are all she needs right now.

The mends in the frayed cords of their rocky partnership…are they just woven from illusion, or are they as real as she thinks?

Simply put, is Fitz warming to her, or is he itching to be rid of her? She thinks the uncomfortable truth lies somewhere in between.

Seeing how well-loved and how well-adjusted he is here, within this team, is nonetheless, sometimes a bit of a kick in the face. Having once always assumed that his place was beside her the whole damn time in S.H.I.E.L.D., it now takes mental recalibration and repeated reminders to herself of her decision to go out on a limb, to offer that olive branch, to throw everything on the line for him as he'd once done for her, too many times to count.

Staying the course becomes a mantra she repeats often to herself, even if he's the one standing problem she's never been able to solve.

For Fitz, it's worth it. Isn't it?

"They're lucky to have you," she blurts out one afternoon as she pushes aside the stack of medical reports she's going through and looks at him sitting across from her.

Fading ribbons of sunlight cast a blondish tint on his shorn hair (the curls barely show now), framing him so perfectly that Jemma can't help feel the sharp regret once again for the man whom she'd lost and found—or rather, is trying to find—again.

Fitz shakes his head slowly and takes his time to answer. His gaze turns inwards and she knows, momentarily, that she has lost him to his memories of a period of time that he's carved without her.

"It's more the other way around, I think," he muses absently, "I'm lucky to have them. So bloody lucky."

The subtext is so heavy in those words that it nearly causes her to retreat, both physically and metaphorically. His team, this new direction he'd taken, the fit he'd found here against all odds…they'd all played a part in reconfiguring, or rather, reconstructing this Fitz who's standing in front of her right now.

Not for the first time, she's thankful for Hunter. He'd taken care of Fitz in more ways than one when she'd thoughtlessly bailed on her best friend in ways that he didn't deserve.

"Who's Amélie?"

Jemma cringes as soon as the words cut through the relative peace between them, not wanting to sound like she has any right to ask him anything personal anymore—she plainly doesn't. But she's put her own foot in her mouth and it's too late to take it back in her quest to satisfy her own morbid curiosity about Fitz's dating life.

That question that's been on the tip of her tongue for weeks is never meant to be asked aloud, but it falls out anyway, a consequence of having it playing in the forefront of her mind for longer than she cares to admit.

And now she's done it. Turned a rather pleasant afternoon into an awkward one.

"I mean, I overheard Hatch mention her the other day in passing and it's not the first time that…god, this is…I was eavesdropping when I really shouldn't have. It's too soon to—no, no Fitz, don't answer that. I'm just—this is clearly none of my concern and you really don't have to answer that. Forget I said anything."

It's the most fumbling she has ever been with a retraction and the sharp, startled look that Fitz throws her morphs into thin-lipped inscrutability as their eyes inadvertently lock in a hold that he breaks first.

"The former team medic." He toys with the handle of his mug and taps an erratic cadence on the porcelain. "She's also someone I was seeing."

The uncomfortable knot grows in her stomach as does the searing loneliness that drills hard into her chest. Jemma doesn't quite dare to ask more, without feeling as though she'll be overstepping her bounds again.

Quietly sliding out of his seat, Fitz pads out of the pantry without looking back at her.

She sags in her chair for the next minute in silence, torn between allowing herself some leeway for that weakness and berating herself for even starting down that path.

After all, Fitz's use of the past tense, the team's gaping absence of a medic before she'd slotted herself into Citadel courtesy of Hunter, the way the team still speaks about Amélie from time to time…there's a riddle right there that she isn't a part of, which she knows she can't be a part of.

And if this is a memory that Fitz needs to have apart from her, he's more than entitled to it without her pathetic attempts at putting a story together if there's none to tell.

oOo

Apart from that her silly hiccup in the pantry, Jemma comes to measure the passing of time in cups of tea spent with Fitz, the periods of solitary lab sessions she has and the hours that he's gone when deployed with the team.

But apparently, her persistence pays off. Or rather, their weakness for tea paves the way.

Their conversations, past that awful, embarrassing moment, rumble to life a little more smoothly, oiled by time and well, Fitz's incredibly giving and loyal nature that he doesn't seem to realise he has even for those who don't deserve it. His short, terse answers gradually grow longer, and though they don't always match her over-eager babble; conversely, it makes her hang onto every word that he says and doesn't say.

She can't help but grow to be possessive of the little moments they have during tea time; it's an allotted time that feels like a privilege these days when it'd once used to be effortless and unthinking.

Yet it's also easier to understand now, why Fitz fits in so well.

The lads treat her the same way, essentially, carving out a space for her when there hasn't been one and the short-lived boys club mentality she'd been expecting lasts only as long as after she'd stitched up the first casualty after a hairy mission in Russia. She attends every pre-mission briefing with them and even when she's not physically at every mission, they come by often enough now to tell her stupid little stories that make her laugh and get themselves some medical supplies when it's plainly unnecessary for them to do so.

It's a quiet afternoon in the lab a few weeks after that foot-in-mouth-blunder when Fitz trudges through the doorway, with slightly heavier scruff—four days he's been gone—and a bad gash in his arm, the fabric torn right through in odd places.

Jemma takes one look at him and drags the fully-stocked first aid kit from its now permanent place under the lab bench. When there's a constant stream of people needing medical attention, it doesn't hurt to have everything ready.

He shakes his head slightly, walks past her and takes his own kit out before heading to the sink to scrub his hands.

"I've got it, Simmons."

She protests immediately, needing something—anything—to do when it's him who needs medical attention. "Fitz, let me have a look at least."

The ease of his practiced movements tells the stark truth. "It isn't the first time I've done this. I'm fine. Nothing to worry about."

What she absolutely doesn't anticipate however, him pulling off the vest and his shirt right there and then to scrub the grime and blood off his torso and the gash on his arm.

To see him bare to the waist, with pants hanging off his hips…it's a sight that causes her breath to catch.

First, because of the smaller, faded scars over his back that Fitz had somehow acquired in the past year and at another one that's still angry and red—all the field experience that's been worn into his skin. For the teenager who'd once proclaimed the lab work and inventing were what he was born to do, the amount of time he now spends in the field makes a mockery out of that innocent statement.

And simply that in all the years she'd known him, he'd never done anything remotely close to this accidental version of a striptease (what he's doing now is so far from an attempt at seduction that it's laughable to even use that word in association with Fitz) yet the casual, unthinking way he does it probably indicates he's become accustomed to this habit of taking care of himself somewhere along the way.

Mesmerised, she draws closer and without thinking at all about the ramifications of what she's about to do, reaches out to gently touch the few marks on his upper back before moving her fingers down the unmarred skin, down the length of his spine. She feels the even rhythm of his breaths turn erratic, every nerve in her hand tingling in response and that makes her itch to move past what he's taken off and—

The tap runs forgotten as Fitz's fluid movements stutter stiffly to a halt, the sheer feral intensity of his stare when he turns questioning eyes on her nearly making her step away. "Simmons?"

Heat spears through her at the realisation of what she'd just done.

"I—these—these marks…where did these come from, Fitz? I didn't know you had so many…"

Flustered, Jemma squeezes her eyes shut and cuts herself off mid-sentence, embarrassment and an entirely new feeling she doesn't quite dare name speeding headily through her veins. Since when did searching for something sensible to say take a disconcerting amount of effort?

Foot…in mouth…once more.

Fitz swipes a small towel from the bottom drawer of the cabinet built under the sink and dries off more quickly than she can offer to help, clumsily shrugging on the torn shirt as he hurriedly takes a step back from her.

"From previous assignments."

"Oh." She gestures vaguely in the direction of the pantry and inches towards the door of the lab, grabbing a random clipboard with haphazardly scribbled notes on it from her side of the lab to press to her chest. "I, well, I'm going for a cup of tea. I—I forgot, it's tea break."

A wince pulls her face taut as she practically sprints to the pantry which is thankfully, always quiet at this time of the day.

Only then does she drop the clipboard carelessly onto the table and stares at her shaking hands and sweaty palms. Feels the rapid clip of her heartrate that has yet to decelerate and the burning flush in her cheeks that refuses to subside.

Something stronger than a cup of tea would be perfect right now.

oOo

If dream-Fitz walked in that liminal space between her waking and sleeping hours prior joining Citadel as a reminder of the penance Jemma thinks she has to pay, this same fantasy springs back to life too vividly to ignore, now reshaped along with her altered circumstances.

It's this dream-Fitz with heat in his impossibly blue eyes, who leads her down an empty, darkened hallway as the sexy groove of music pulses around them. She follows willingly, not wanting any space between them even with their clasped hands pulling each other along. He's in a smart suit and looks the most handsome she'd ever seen him, she's in a tiny sparkly dress that matches his eyes, hair piled high, giggling, maybe even tipsy and more than a little debauched.

She's happy. So, so happy. Swaying to the beat while he tries to still her hips with wandering hands, a flirtation that notches her arousal, up and up, until she gets what she wants.

All patience gone, he turns wickedly on her with his body hard and grinding against hers as he shifts their entwined hands high on the wall above her, their lips meeting over and over.

Then she's busy undoing his belt, pulling the opening of his pants apart just as he's ripping the delicate buttons on the front of her dress with the same lack of finesse, unheeding of who sees them in this state of undress.

She tells him that she misses him, to hurry, that she is a firestorm ready to combust and he breaks their sultry embrace to kneel before her, yanking both dress and knickers past her hips with a breathless chuckle before standing again and hiking her bare legs around his waist, urgency colouring every bit of their movements as he—.

This is where she wakes up.

With nails digging tightly into her mattress and legs tangled around a flattened pillow that's no substitute for Fitz. Feeling hot and bothered, panting and frustratingly unfulfilled because of a dream that crumbled too quickly into dust.

Objectively, Jemma knows it's a part of her brain catching up with the idea of Fitz as a romantic partner—it's her mental faculties getting on par with what her heart has long decided. Ironically, the hints that have crept up to her over the years hadn't been sufficient in helping her envision this side of him that she'd never been privy to when they were best friends, even during the times when he'd gone out with other people. Quite absurdly, all it'd literally taken were a few inflamed touches and heated dreams to do the trick.

It's enough to get her up at 4 a.m. and instead of returning to bed, she scours for online psychology journals about the scientific interpretation of her nightly meanderings, wish-fulfilment and external stimuli and—unless it's just desperation to justify her feelings and find scientific backing for answers to what she already knows?

The shrill cry of her alarm three hours later closes that frenzied period of research that leaves her unable to meet Fitz's eyes for a day or two.

oOo

"The next assignment," Edwin says without preamble in the pre-mission briefing, "is going to be quite different from what we normally do, headed by a joint taskforce comprising a group of law enforcement agencies and private security companies banding together. Citadel's been called in for back up. The information was given out this morning and the missions brief's just been uploaded to the central server."

That alone makes Fitz sit up in his chair. Haven't they had a bit too much of a different mission of late?

But what Edwin seems to be coming up these days with keeps life interesting at the very least. (Or if he were to be quite honest, it keeps his mind off the conundrum that's Simmons.)

Whittled down to the basics, the rather public discovery of an ancient artefact renders its transportation to a classified location problematic, particularly with the ever-hungry press on their heels, potential hostile interceptions in the air and treasure hunters with billions at their disposal following its progress.

Immediately, Fitz swipes right on his tablet and a detailed map of the object's long and convoluted journey from Venezuela to North America flicks on. Next to him, Simmons does the same, her brow furrowed in concentration. She's been called on this assignment as well—that much of a risk it poses to the team when too many cooks are itching to spoil the broth—on Edwin's orders.

Fitz wonders if Hunter once again, has had a part to play in this, blurring the lines within which S.H.I.E.L.D. operate and the parts where Citadel actually does. As soon as that thought comes, he shakes it off with a small smirk. To give credit where it's due, Hunter has clout, but not that much clout.

In the meantime, Langston takes over from Edwin.

"The first leg will be done by air, the second by ship. Operatives have inserted themselves specifically into specialised logistics positions to oversee its progress from south to north."

"Citadel will not play middlemen to be pushed around," Edwin puts in firmly. "Neither are we babysitters for agents who don't play nice." He's quick to reassure everyone, seeing as they're justbackup security for the transportation of some highly volatile cargo from one place to another. "But the general consensus is, toes will be stepped on, guns will be drawn, and hopefully no one gets terribly hurt. That's just how it works no matter how much we play nice."

Fitz grimaces and watches as Simmons sneaks a similar look at him. That much they agree on without even the need for words: someone always gets hurt.

Smithy's the only one who finds it hilarious, but his infectious laughter lightens the edgy atmosphere and even coaxes a reluctant chuckle from Langston.

Edwin wraps up the briefing with a warning. "Know where your boundaries are, and we'll be fine. Wheels up, one hour."

Before Fitz knows it, he's all packed up and decked out in heavy gear with Simmons at his side, the Gulf of Mexico stretching as far as his eye can see from his vantage point on the powered vessel anchored to another bigger one, tensely watching the complicated proceedings of transferring the bands take place in international waters.

Two minutes, in and out. Clean, uncomplicated and as quickly as possible.

Hatch starts the stopwatch.

The changeover is the riskiest part of the operation, multiplied over by the number of times that it'll have to be done in that long, long journey as the artefact makes its way to its permanent home.

The sudden appearance of few blips on the radar and a warning chirp are all Fitz gets before a series of gunshots pepper the air, as the carefully planned operation falls apart in seconds when a couple of military interceptors splice the waves and break the careful formation of boats.

Ducking automatically, he reaches for his own weapon as more shots ping the side of the vessel. From the corner of his eye, he sees Langston and Smithy inch towards the bow, their assault rifles spitting out shots as black-booted feet storm the deck.

In a volley of gunfire, he realises Simmons has disappeared from view.

 _Where the fuck is she?_

The whiz of a bullet slicing past his ear makes him duck again and roll into a corner where he finally sees Simmons, prone and struggling with a balaclava-clad figure who's wrestled her to the floor.

He raises his own rifle without hesitation, flipping the switch from stun to kill without thinking and takes aim. In a spray of red mist, the assailant drops in a heap as Simmons wrests herself free of the dead man and clambers to her feet.

With a quick sweep of the situation around them, he tries to get on his two feet on a surface continually rocking with the continued bombardment of gunshots—just in time to see several rocket launchers emerge from the interceptors.

It takes him a second to realise what's really going to happen next.

Shite.

"Simmons, move!"

In the second after he shoves her towards the stern and away from the trajectory of the projectile, it hits. The bow splinters into pieces, causing the boat to lurch wildly to a side and toss Langston and Smithy into the choppy waters.

 _No, no….!_

Fitz finds himself sliding across the blood-drenched floor, scrabbling for purchase before the second one follows. The entire boat bucks upwards before slamming back down, hurling him in a wide arc into the turquoise water.

The world overturns at a dizzying speed.

Down, then up, then down again as the waves crash in and slap his face and head. Salt water rushes up his nose and into his throat, the agonising burn sending a fresh round of panic with it.

 _Fitz! Fitz!_

He thinks he hears his name. High-pitched, terrified. Where's Simmons?

Pain and panic flare, as he struggles to the surface and gulps a lungful of air, but already, the weight of his equipment and clothes is dragging him down, past that first lucky attempt to stay afloat.

His legs scissor upwards, in a furtive but futile push for oxygen—

Past and present coalesce as the edges of his vision fuzz grey.

 _Ward! Ward!_

He's sinking, fear freezing every limb stiff.

It's blue, all around. Just like the last time.

Air…he needs air.

The unforgiving water closes around his head as the weight of his tac-vest and weapons tug him down, a recurring nightmare in automatic rewind.

 _He's talking, the implications of their position on the ocean floor injecting a calmness that he never knew he was capable of feeling in this dire moment. (Maybe that's because she's still by his side…they're in this together, even to the very end and there's comfort to take in that.)_

 _These pods are built to be compatible with all S.H.I.E.L.D. aircraft, submarines, spacecraft…we slowly sank as it increased the density of the outer walls._

 _His arm is in a sling, blood has crusted on his face, but he's been working frantically to get any distress signal transmitted and that somehow had overridden the pain._

 _There's blood on her head too. An absurd thought crosses his mind to kiss it better._

 _The pulse beats hard and fast in her neck. His probably mirrors hers, but not for the same reason. He needs to say something that he thought he'd keep a secret to his grave._

Fitz forces his eyes open, trying to ignore the sting of the brine. It's still blue, all around, with the glint of dappled sunlight barely penetrating the surface of the water.

There's a little air left in his lungs. Oddly, the terror slowly abates as rational thought forces its way in again.

 _I thought we were dead, for sure._

He's obviously not dead. Yet. And he's still functioning, until his air runs out in seconds. His hands move automatically to disengage the vest. His boots are too tightly-tied to bother with.

Meanwhile, he sinks into deeper blue.

 _We'll find a way out of here, right? Are you scared? What do you think it's like? Death?_

 _This is where all life began anyway…_

The vest finally breaks free, tumbling slowly into the deep, past where the water runs from clear to murky. He barely spares it a glance as the cold, cold current drifts upwards, marking his descent past the thermocline.

He begins a morbid countdown. Ten seconds—an eternity to wait.

Nine. Eight. Seven.

Everything is too cold.

Wrestling with the weapons strapped to his thigh next, he suddenly thinks of Simmons.

 _I couldn't find the courage to tell you, so please—_

His lungs expel the last vestiges of air.

 _This is it. No, no…nonono—_

Two dark shapes materialise abruptly beside him and he's suddenly enclosed in a warm grip before as they tug him upwards, their hold steady and unwavering as they reverse his downward course. Immediately, a determined hand forcibly inserts a regulator to his mouth as he bites down and frantically gulps in huge pockets of air.

The gleam of sunlight now pierces his half-closed eyes, the sting of the brine gradually lessening. But fire and ice prick his joints, and blinding pain pounds beneath his eyelids and nose, getting worse with each second—

They break the surface with a thunderous splash and it's Simmons whom he finally sees, whose arms are braced firmly around his shoulder and neck, eyes wide in relief, her hand still stubbornly pressing her second-stage regulator hard against his mouth.

Hatch's his other flotation of support on the other side, yelling at something in the distance.

Simmons is also shouting amidst the bedlam, paddling hard for the both of them to stay afloat in the midst of the carnage, a scuba tank hastily affixed to her side.

Stay with me! Please, please…breathe, Fitz, breathe!

Broken pieces of boats float around them, some already charred black beyond recognition.

A stealth helicopter circles overhead, so low that its rotor blades whip the sea foam into his eyes until a rescue net lowers from its side. He's hoisted onto it, the pain in his head causing him to black out momentarily, rousing groggily only when his back roughly hits solid ground.

Just like that they're in the air; the sudden upward and forward glide of the helicopter makes him want to throw up but a pair of firm hands hold him resolutely horizontal.

Emergency oxygen is placed over his nose this time, clean and sweet.

The dull hum in his ears increases, amplifying everything that he feels tangibly: the sharp, rapid rise and fall of his chest, the weight of his heavy clothing that he can't seem to shed, the water trickling over him—he raises a hand weakly to swipe it off, only to realises it's Simmons smiling and dripping tears and salt water over him, holding his head steady and kissing his face over and over.

Her words slip in and out of range of his hearing, but he thinks he sees love and lost and don't leave me please cross her lips again and again. His eyelids droop heavily just as the realisation dawns on him that her babbling admission had just shifted what he'd for so long, deemed conjecture, to hopeful belief.

Fitz wakes again to bright, white light and uncomfortably loud noise as the screeching of wheels and rapid-fire talking bring the A&E department into sharp focus. Simmons is running next the gurney they've put him on, his hand tightly held in hers, a connection that's only reluctantly broken when they slot him into the hyperbaric chamber.

 _I love you,_ she mouths, ashen-faced as she presses her hands on the glass, devastation etched deep in the lines around her eyes. _Always_.

His eyes burn hot and wet, like hers.

 _Always_.

oOo

The appearance of sophisticated pirates linked with a terrorist group, along with the multiple casualties that the team comes out of the botched operation with are enough for Edwin to put his foot down and stick to tame risk assessment projects while everyone recovers from the ordeal.

Walking past his private office in the first week after Fitz gets back from hospital, Jemma finally hears him lose his cool as he gets on phone call after phone call to sort out the mess that happened in the Gulf of Mexico.

Edwin isn't the only one shaken.

The entire team is in fact, out of commission for a while, their injuries ranging from mild to rather severe, though it's Fitz getting lost in the deep (again) that makes her stop and struggle for composure each time she thinks about it.

It's akin to having a nightmare coming back to life just as you thought it's long dead and buried for good. This near-replication of their time on the ocean floor, merely reminds her that she'd nearly lost him for good ( _again_ ) and as what?

As senseless collateral damage in the chaos of battle. Apparently that one catastrophe after Ward's betrayal hadn't been enough of a break.

The relief, so excruciating in its entirety, had torn through her with jagged teeth despite his quiet reassurances after he woke up in the hospital bed that he was alright (his speech isn't slurred and his bad hand shakes no worse than before) and that nothing bad had happened to that big brain of his.

The absurdity of the past year gnaws on Jemma as she sits at the lab bench and stares blankly at the stack of reports yet unwritten. Touch—the solid feel of him—is what she craves, the physical reassurance that tells her he's here, he's alive.

Instead, she thumbs the edges of the papers and ponders the heart-breaking game of she-left, he-left that they'd subjected each other to, the macabre parallel of the way Fitz nearly gets swallowed by water twice, the people who'd come between them and the grief it'd all caused.

But the reality is that he's healthy and kicking and thankfully unscathed. And blissfully tinkering with a spare part or two in his little corner of the lab, oblivious to the churning turmoil that she cycles through repeatedly.

Incredibly, Fitz manages brush it off as if he hadn't been put through the wringer when it technically should have triggered another round of PTSD. At any rate, it's the uncharacteristic calm, unbothered front that she sees despite carefully watching for ripples in the pond.

Frustration knotting into a skein, Jemma stands abruptly, accidentally sending her chair so violently into the side of the bench that it topples the bottle of phenol from the shelf above.

She yelps in horror, stepping instinctively away from the shattered glass and the spill—

"What the bloody hell—?!"

Before she knows that's happening, Fitz is running her straight into the safety shower Edwin had specifically commissioned for them when she'd joined Citadel.

"Clothes off, Simmons!"

Her blouse and bra are already off, her pants halfway undone even as he barks the order at her. Lab safety protocol is practically engraved in the palm of her hand and he knows it.

"Fitz, I've got this—" Her protests die a weak death as he flicks every knob upward and shoves her inside.

"Where's the spill?" He interrupts harshly above the sound of the roaring water, shoving himself inside with her, panic written on his face, unheeding of the streams hitting his clothes.

"What are you…?" Too numb to process what he's doing, she can only gape as he takes over.

She shivers involuntarily at the first touch of his hands on her body as the water sluices over them.

Intent on scrubbing away the minutest remnants of phenol that could have inadvertently touched her skin, he goes down on one knee, strokes roughly over her thighs before moving up her lower back, to her waist, chest, neck and down again, rubbing the skin hard while she recovers sufficiently to do the same from the opposite direction.

Memories of her own fevered dreams insert themselves bright and vividly without warning. Of what they were about to do before she awoke. Of his devouring hands and mouth that she'd so badly wanted on her.

There is nothing even vaguely erotic in what he's doing here, yet the look on his face as he works his hands over her skin—

Jemma slams the knobs of the shower down, the sudden silence deafening as she slowly turns to face him, as stark naked as the day she was born, and him, with his sodden clothes still stuck water tight to him.

Barely an inch separates them.

He's frozen wide-eyed like her, mouth agape, breathing hard and flushed with the exertion of hauling her into the shower and literally giving her a vigorous bath without second thought.

The redness that's creeping over his ears and cheekbones however, probably has more to do with the dawning realisation of what they'd—no, what he'd just done.

"Shit," he mutters and turns away. "I—I didn't really mean to…"

It's probably more gentlemanly instinct and socially-conditioned embarrassment than anything else, considering all that he's already seen and touched, albeit incidentally.

Her whisper comes unbidden as she reaches for his hands on a whim. "Don't, please… don't apologise."

A pause. "I'm not."

She watches, entranced, as he shakes a hand loose of her grip. Reaches up to trace the path of a rivulet of water streaking down the side of her face, from temple to cheek, the unmistakable shift from nervousness to a connection so electric that it has her shuddering in anticipation as his thumb brushes the side of her lips—

The loud buzz of her mobile dispels the sensual haze, and just like that, the awkward skittishness returns.

"Damn it!" He snatches his hand away like he's just been burned.

"Fitz, um…I need a towel." She's pretty sure she feels the same kind of mortification, but for a different reason—because this is precisely the guilty pleasure she can't bring herself to regret. But not before briefly entertaining the thought of running out, sans clothing, to hurl the damn thing against the wall. "Also, a new set of clothes—"

"Uh, right." He's already ducking out and grabbing the nearest thing he finds that's closest to a towel, handing it to her with only a hand stuck in the shower cubicle. "I'm goin'…I'll get something for you."

It's only after hearing the wet squeaks of his shoes on concrete as he hurries off that she slumps against the wall, towel still clutched in a limp hand and panting like she's just completed a sprint up the whole length of the Thames and back again.

oOo

The path of avoidance that Fitz is taking most likely screams cowardice, but there's no way he'll be able to return to the lab and look Simmons in the eye for the time being.

Instead, he'd taken the long way back to his room, taken a cold shower (a deliberate one this time) and emerged from it no less aggravated than when he'd run out of the lab like a rabbit with a fox on its tail.

Fitz paces the small free space in his room, running hands over his face then putting them behind his neck as he relives the whole bloody fiasco with a groan.

 _What the fuck did he just do?_

Having fallen into that nebulous, muddled state of wanting Simmons again, he knows that it'd be so, so easy to give in. That initial resolve, to stay clear of her, now miserably failing when she'd drawn lines of clarity about her feelings, leaving no room for doubt what she meant. To allow hope to move them past this tentative friendship that they'd re-formed.

That the indecision and the apprehension he felt which had coloured the first few months of her return had in fact, transformed into something new when he wasn't really looking. That it now leaves possibilities to explore—which is a staggering thought in itself—, if he would allow himself to think about them together not as a forbidden entity any longer.

A knock on his bedroom door interrupts his pacing and he hesitates before pulling the door open, already knowing who it'll be.

She sweeps in dressed in his old shirt and sweats, pushing the door shut behind her with an emphatic click, then locking it.

His adrenaline spikes for an entirely different reason.

"I waited. You didn't go back."

What?

"To the lab," Simmons clarifies when the confusion shows briefly on his face, and walks further into the room to stand in front of him.

It isn't lost on him that their positions are an exact mirror of the way they'd stood in the shower not an hour earlier.

He looks at her, the determination on her face as heart-breaking as it is thrilling. "Wanted some time to think.

"About us?"

Little by little, she's pushing the boundaries, testing his barriers. His slight resistance is automatic, helping to stay the torrent of emotion that would otherwise overwhelm. But that charged, magnetic pull, altogether new, flares to life again.

"Does it matter?"

"It matters, Fitz." Her sigh echoes loud in the small space. He hears the hitch in her voice, part-exasperated, part-tense. "It always matters when it comes to you. To us."

He watches as she lifts a hand towards him and at the last moment, he grips her wrist before she closes the distance between them. Instead, she curls her other hand around his neck, the pads of her fingers already searing hot on his skin, shifting their balance until her back's against his door with him pressing into her, so close that their breaths mingle.

There's no mistaking the small gasp that escapes her lips, or the fluttering of her pulse in her neck or the slight turn of her hips that curl distractingly into his. But he needs to know beyond any shadow of doubt, that this, this compromising position they find themselves in, first, out of accident, now, deliberately engineered—and what happens beyond—is really what she's after.

That it's him she's looking at and not anyone else. Not as her second option, not her consolation prize.

"No going back from this, Jemma." His warning is stark, all the little things left unsaid coded in that issued challenge. But he's also depending on the only unchangeable fact that he knows right now: that Simmons will not back down. "So you'd bloody be sure—"

Fitz has time to blink only once before she presses her lips onto his, her hand already in his hair, threading and pulling.

The tinder of buried attraction neither had been able to give voice to sparks into flames, the culmination of not-so-innocent touches and circumstantial foils.

He lifts her leg around his hip, deepening a kiss ignited by weeks of carnal frustration, their duelling tongues breaking their frenzied dance only when they finally stumble with hot purpose, limbs still tightly entwined, onto his bed.

 _Hurry, Fitz_ , she whispers, as lost as he is in the ebb and flow of sensation.

With a dark chuckle, he complies.

oOo

It's only later, finally washed up the shore of consciousness, tucked under his sheets and skin still slicked with sweat when Jemma tells him, quite earnestly that she could never think of life without him, there aren't any spaces in her that aren't already filled by him. If this isn't love, then she doesn't know what love is.

It takes him a while to reply, though that affectionate openness in his eyes, the loving smile that curves his lips—the emotions that she'd been craving to see that he _doesn't_ need to say aloud—are answers enough.

"I feel the same way."

 _Home_.

This is home, she thinks, with the frayed rope of their one-broken relationship in her hands, and this entirely new and precious thing that's them now.

 _\- Fin_


End file.
